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Tim Sweeney directly addressed claims that there are issues between Disney and Fortnite.
What Does Disney Have To Do With Fortnite?
Last February 2024, Disney invested $ 1.5 billion into Epic Games to partner for Fortnite. Disney was already working with Epic Games to add Disney characters into the game. At the same time, Fortnite also brought in characters owned by other companies, including Disney’s rival WB Discovery. Epic continues to keep the crossovers going to this day.
But this was really more Disney’s move than it was Epic Games’. Disney had been involved in video games since the 1990s. But they never found the proper direction to be successful, either as a publisher or developer of their own games. This was a sign they would place their trust in Epic to make memorable Disney games in Fortnite itself.
On October 2024, Epic revealed they would make a persistent universe for a dedicated Disney Experience. This means the experiences Fortnite has built so far aren’t what they have in mind for Disney. We’re still waiting to see what this Disney Experience will eventually look like.
But There Was Another Great Disturbance In The Force
Last May of this year, Epic Games entered controversy because of their AI Darth Vader. Players could get Vader AI to respond to multiple questions and seek out entertaining responses. Epic Games got James Earl Jones’ estate and Disney on board to make AI Darth Vader happen. But some controversies persisted.
For one, there is still a prevailing stigma against the generative AI/AI model technology used for AI Darth Vader. Secondly, some were uncomfortable with how James Earl Jones’ speech likeness was used.
There were also concerns that players tricked AI Darth Vader to say politically incorrect things. Epic Games planned for this issue, but they had to program these out only after the AI was caught doing it.
Lastly, SAG-AFTRA filed an unfair labor practice vs. Epic Games over James Earl Jones. They have since ended their legal action as part of the new agreement that ended their video game industry strike.
What’s Happening Now
A Wall Street Journal report made these claims about the AI Darth Vader issue, as well as Disney and Epic Games:
Some Epic executives have complained about the slow pace of the decision-making at Disney, with signoffs needed from so many different divisions, said people familiar with the situation. And an experiment to allow gamers to interact with an AI-generated Darth Vader was fraught.
Tim Sweeney responded to this report on Twitter. Sweeney said this:
The anonymous quote is BS. The speed of Disney and Epic collaborations like Darth Vader has been awesome and is around 10x the ordinary speed of media company dealings in this business. We even provided a statement to the writer of this article saying so, but they chose not to print it.
Sweeney’s debunking of the report was clearly necessary. Even if the report intended to dispute his account, they should have printed his statement to provide a complete picture. It is possible that this is damage control from Sweeney. However, WSJ’s decision not to air his side delegitimizes their report instead of supporting it.
Outside of their report, there’s no reason to believe there are issues between Disney and Epic Games at all. We should expect the Fortnite Disney Experience to completely debunk these claims when it finally gets revealed.
