Epic's senior director of global communications Liz Markman responded to this week's reporting, stating that recent coverage is "not reflective of the ambitions of the Disney collaboration" and that the two companies are "building a new games and entertainment universe of Disney experiences." That statement arrived amid reports painting a more complicated picture behind the scenes.
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The extraction shooter project
Epic Games is developing an unnamed extraction shooter featuring Disney characters, with a planned launch window of November 2026. The project is one of several games said to be in development as a direct result of Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic back in 2024, a deal that was originally framed around building an expansive Disney universe within Fortnite.
The extraction shooter is described as something in the vein of Embark Studios' Arc Raiders, which launched to strong player numbers and became one of the bigger success stories in the genre recently. Internal reviews of the Disney project have flagged concerns about unoriginal game mechanics, even as some at Epic remain optimistic about its launch prospects.
Three games, one wobbling plan
The Disney extraction shooter isn't the only project in the pipeline. At least two additional unnamed games are planned as part of the collaboration. The picture for those is less encouraging.
Game two is reportedly receiving average internal reviews, while resources originally allocated to game three have been shifted toward the projects closer to release. Disney was described as "disappointed" with Epic's progress on the broader slate, which drove those resource reallocations in the first place. Markman addressed the reshuffling directly: "Epic's timelines are aggressive and always have been. We've heavily moved developers onto projects with releases approaching, while smaller prototyping teams are working on further-off projects."
A Disney spokesperson also weighed in, saying the company remains "focused on our long-term collaboration with Epic which continues to have strong momentum."
The Fortnite context you need
This report lands at a genuinely difficult moment for Epic. The company laid off 1,000 employees not long ago, citing a "downturn in engagement" and acknowledging it was "spending significantly more than we're making." Shortly after, Epic confirmed it would shut down Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and Festival Battle Stage.
What most players miss in all of this is that the Disney collaboration was always meant to be bigger than Fortnite crossover skins. Buzz Lightyear, Emperor Zurg, and a wave of Marvel characters have all appeared in Fortnite, and last month Epic gave players tools to build their own Star Wars experiences inside the game. But the $1.5 billion investment was supposed to produce standalone games, and that's where things appear to be getting complicated.
Tech reporter Alex Heath also noted on The Town podcast that Disney has reportedly been interested in acquiring Epic outright at some point, though nothing formal has materialized.
What an extraction shooter with Disney IP could actually look like
The genre comparison to Arc Raiders is worth sitting with. Extraction shooters ask players to drop into a zone, complete objectives, gather loot, and get out alive, with the threat of losing everything if they die before extracting. It's a tense, high-stakes loop that has found a real audience.
Slap Disney characters onto that framework and you have something that could genuinely stand out on store shelves, or collapse under the weight of tonal whiplash. The key here is execution: the concern about unoriginal mechanics suggests Epic may be leaning too hard on the genre template without enough of a Disney-specific twist to differentiate it. That's a real problem in a market where Hunt: Showdown and Arc Raiders already own significant mindshare.
No character roster has been confirmed, and the game doesn't even have a title yet. With a reported November 2026 window, a reveal can't be far off. Keep an eye on gaming news for updates as this one develops, and check out the latest reviews if you want to get a feel for where the extraction shooter genre currently stands.
