For years, Unity and Unreal have ruled the game‑development landscape, powering roughly 70% of the titles that appeared on Steam in 2025. While Godot has made noticeable strides and some studios cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine being a prime example—the market has largely been a duopoly. Into this entrenched arena step three seasoned veterans, Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient, who have launched Immens with a bold claim: there is still space for a fresh engine, and it can be built with the help of artificial intelligence.
The founders’ résumés read like a who’s‑who of the industry. Brussee helped shape the original Quake engine and later co‑founded Guerrilla Games; De Jong spent years at Epic Games, contributing to Unreal’s evolution; Valient’s background includes senior roles at Apple and Boss Key. Their combined experience spans the very companies that dominate today’s engine market, giving them a unique perspective on where those tools fall short. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that “the opportunity to build a new engine didn’t exist a couple of years ago.” He believes AI‑assisted programming now makes it feasible to start from a clean slate and deliver a fully functional system quickly, without the massive overhead that traditionally accompanies engine development.
The vision is not to replace human creativity with a prompt‑based generator, but to give developers a highly extensible foundation that can be customized far beyond the limited scripting layers most current engines provide. Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarified that the AI embedded in their platform is not about conjuring assets out of thin air. Instead, it is designed to reason over large codebases and data sets, making the engine’s architecture inherently modular. “If we design the code with AI in mind, even a solo developer can add a custom particle system or a bespoke physics module without rewriting the whole engine,” he explained.
This approach aims to empower smaller teams to extend the engine rapidly, turning what used to be months of engineering work into tasks that can be prototyped over a coffee break. The motivation behind Immens is also economic.
Brussee described the current climate as “rough” for creators: development costs keep climbing, and studios risk their entire livelihood on a single title. He asked, “Can we find new, more efficient ways of working that lower budgets and shrink team sizes without sacrificing quality?” The answer, according to Immens, lies in leveraging AI to automate repetitive chores, streamline pipelines, and reduce the need for large, specialized staff. De Jong, the chief product officer, warned that the engine market has entered a phase of “standardisation and consolidation.” While this has produced solid, reliable tools, it also creates a monolithic environment where developers must conform to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows. He envisions an engine that adapts to the user, not the other way around.
“Flexibility is key,” he said. “You should be able to swap components, append new features, and craft tools that match your personal workflow—exact shortcuts, interfaces, and everything else your project demands.” Valient acknowledged AI’s double‑edged nature. The technology is powerful but can “go off the rails” if left unchecked.
Immens therefore places control firmly in the hands of the user: the engine logs its actions, provides a clear history, and ensures repeatable outcomes. This transparency allows developers to create throw‑away tools for specific tasks—like generating five characters with a particular trait—without committing months of manual labor. Flexibility extends to the degree of AI integration. De Jong emphasized that Immens will not force a single workflow; studios can decide how much AI to employ and where.
The architecture is built on open standards, meaning text‑based files can be read and manipulated by any compatible software. Brussee highlighted the advantage: “If you use Blender, Maya, or any generative tool, you can plug it directly into Immens because everything speaks the same language.” This openness contrasts with many existing engines that act as closed ecosystems, hindering interoperability. The broader industry conversation around AI is fraught with hype and fear. Some pundits on LinkedIn predict a future where a simple prompt can spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience.
Immens’s team tempers such expectations, describing AI as a “tool” rather than a magic button. Valient believes AI will make developers better, not replace them, and stresses the responsibility to wield it ethically.
De Jong added that any technology can be misused, but it is up to the community to guide its application toward constructive ends. Economic concerns also linger, especially the fear of an AI bubble.
Valient compared the situation to the dot‑com era: the internet didn’t disappear when the bubble burst; many companies fell, but the underlying technology persisted. Immens aims to build a solid engine first, using AI to accelerate development and inspire bigger dreams.
Whether the market is in a bubble remains uncertain, but the founders are confident that a well‑crafted product will survive. Funding is still modest. Immens has secured “first commitments” but has not disclosed amounts, noting that excessive capital can breed complacency.
Brussee joked that too much money makes a startup lazy, and the team prefers to stay lean—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers. This small, agile structure is intentional: building an engine is complex, but throwing a million engineers at it doesn’t guarantee success.
Instead, a focused team can make deliberate decisions and iterate quickly, which aligns with their goal of seizing a narrow window of opportunity created by AI’s rise. Currently, Immens is working on a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow. They aim to release the demo within the month, already moving twice as fast as their original timeline projected when they started in April.
While the business model is still being refined, Brussee expressed admiration for Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” licensing approach, though he cautioned that it’s too early to commit to a specific strategy. Ultimately, the trio hopes Immens will rekindle creativity and risk‑taking in games.
“We love games as complex artistic expressions and want to see more of that,” Brussee concluded. “If our technology can enable more innovation, that would be amazing.”