# Epic is building Claude and Gemini into Unreal Engine 6, whether developers like it or not > Source: > Published: 2026-06-18 12:57:24+00:00 *Epic will let studios plug Claude, Gemini, or any model they like into the next Unreal Engine to do the ‘tedious work’ of building games. More than half of developers think that is a bad idea.* Epic Games has laid out its plans for Unreal Engine 6, and generative AI sits right at the centre of them. At its State of Unreal keynote at Unreal Fest in Chicago on Wednesday, the Fortnite maker said UE6 will fold in integrations for models such as [Anthropic’s Claude](https://thenextweb.com/news/anthropics-claude-opus-4-8-is-its-most-honest-ai-model-yet-and-mythos-is-coming-in-weeks) and [Google’s Gemini](https://thenextweb.com/news/google-gemini-3-5-flash-agentic-ai-coding-io-2026), pitching them as ‘creativity and productivity multipliers’ for game studios. The idea is to hand the grunt work of game-making to a model, so teams can spend more time on creative decisions. It is the same logic that took Claude into [design tools at Canva](https://thenextweb.com/news/canva-anthropic-claude-design-ai-powered-visual-suite), now pointed at the software that builds games. ## What Epic is actually shipping UE6 rests on three pillars, according to Marcus Wassmer, the executive who leads Epic’s development team. The first is a new gameplay programming model called Verse, a language Epic says should feel familiar to anyone who has used Python or C#. The second is making game content and code portable across different games and engines through open standards. The third is AI. Epic is exposing the engine through a Model Context Protocol (MCP) layer, the open standard that lets large language models connect to other software. That means studios can mix and match models rather than being locked into one. “UE6 will ship with tools and workflows where you can choose to bring your own favorite models,” Wassmer wrote. A first version is already here. Unreal Engine 5.8, released on the same day, ships an experimental MCP plugin that connects any LLM to core engine systems, including blueprints, assets, levels, materials, and meshes. In a demo, Epic showed Claude Code pulling objects from an asset library to furnish a virtual apartment, then adjusting the lighting in a city scene to match a real-world reference photo. Developers can still move everything by hand afterwards. ## The real shift is who the engine depends on The obvious story is that AI has arrived in Unreal Engine. The more important one is that Epic is turning third-party models into a standing part of how games get made, inside the toolset a large slice of the industry runs on, from Fortnite to countless studios that license the engine. UE6 itself is a way off. Epic is targeting an early access release at the end of 2027, with a full launch 12 to 18 months after that. The new engine also unifies Epic’s two development streams, the standalone UE5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite, into a single product. One early proof point: Epic plans to let players carry their Fortnite outfits into other games built on UE6, and let developers build skins that work inside Fortnite. ## Half of developers think this is a mistake Epic is pushing AI into its engine at a moment when much of the industry is wary of it. In the Game Developers Conference’s 2026 State of the Game Industry survey of more than 2,300 workers, 52 per cent said they thought generative AI was having a negative effect on the industry. That is up from 30 per cent in 2025 and 18 per cent in 2024. Just 7 per cent saw a positive impact. The unease is already showing. Poncle, the studio behind Vampire Survivors, said it was ‘reviewing’ its Fortnite collaboration following the gen-AI news. Epic, meanwhile, is cutting costs. It laid off more than 1,000 staff in March, as [Fortnite engagement has softened](https://thenextweb.com/news/minecraft-roblox-popularity-surge-fortnite) against rivals like Roblox. Chief executive Tim Sweeney has made his stance clear. Last November he argued that a ‘made with AI’ tag “makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production.” With UE6, Epic is building that assumption directly into the tools. Whether the studios that depend on Unreal follow it there is the open question. ## Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.