The statement did include that all art should also be AI-generated, which is a whole other thing. I'd also make a large difference between most code being AI-generated to start with, and actually not writing by hand at all anymore.

This is a critical piece missing from the original article. It would make a lot more sense that game devs and other employees would be "shocked" at being told there would be AI art generated with "full AI workflows"[0].

No hand written code is practically the industry norm now, yet game assets and visuals is still mostly done by hand. The backlash would seem to line up more with Epic encouraging AI generated art, which is incredibly unpopular in the art and game dev communities.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/report-epic-games-goe...