For years, Unity and Unreal have reigned supreme in the game‑development arena, together powering roughly 70 % of the titles that landed on Steam in 2025. While open‑source alternatives like Godot have gained traction, and a handful of studios cling to proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine, the market has largely been a duopoly dominated by the two giants.
Enter Immersive, a fledgling venture founded by three seasoned veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—who believe there is still room for a fresh engine that addresses the shortcomings of the status quo. Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of the industry: experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple.
Together they aim to challenge the entrenched players with a platform built around artificial intelligence. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels right: “There’s an opportunity now to build a new engine that didn’t exist a couple of years ago. With AI‑assisted programming, you can start from scratch again and, under strong guidance, deliver full‑featured tools much faster.” Valient, Immersive’s chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they are employing is not the flashy “prompt‑to‑asset” kind that dominates headlines.
Instead, it is woven into the engine’s architecture to make the codebase highly extensible. “AI can reason over large codebases and data sets,” he said.
“If we design the engine with that capability in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system or a bespoke gameplay mechanic without wrestling with opaque scripting layers.” This approach, he argues, lets creators use AI as a productivity multiplier rather than a magic wand. The motivation behind Immersive’s AI‑first engine stems from what Brussee describes as a “rough” market landscape. Game development costs are spiraling, making it increasingly difficult for small studios to survive. “We need new ways of working that cut expenses, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines,” he warned.
“Otherwise you risk your livelihood and your studio’s future.” De Jong, the company’s chief product officer, observes that the engine ecosystem has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has given developers a solid foundation, it has also led to a monolithic mindset where studios must bend to the constraints of the engine’s proprietary file formats and workflows.
“We need innovation, not more standardisation,” he asserted. “Our goal is to give developers an engine that adapts to them, not the other way around.” Flexibility is a recurring theme in Immersive’s vision. De Jong envisions a system where developers can swap components, append new modules, and craft tailor‑made tools that match their personal workflows.
“Imagine being able to design an interface with the exact shortcuts, features, and visual layout that your team needs—nothing more, nothing less,” he said. Valient also cautioned that AI, while powerful, can misbehave if left unchecked. “We’re building Immersive so that users stay in control and can trace every decision the engine makes,” he explained. This transparency ensures repeatable results and allows developers to create disposable, task‑specific tools—like a one‑off character generator that can be discarded after use—without incurring prohibitive costs.
The platform is deliberately agnostic about workflows. De Jong emphasized that Immersive will not force a particular pipeline; instead, the underlying architecture will let teams decide how much AI to incorporate and where. “The AI must understand the context correctly, but the choice of when to invoke it stays with the user.” Interoperability is another pillar of the design. By relying on open, text‑based standards, Immersive aims to play nicely with existing tools such as Blender, Maya, or any generative‑art system.
“If the files are readable as plain text, the AI can ingest them and act on them,” Brussee noted. “This opens the door to smarter, more fluid interfaces across the entire development stack.” The conversation around AI in games is not without controversy.
Some commentators on LinkedIn hype the notion of “click‑to‑game” engines that could spawn Grand Theft Auto‑scale experiences from a single prompt. Immersive’s founders acknowledge that such extremes are speculative; they view AI as a sophisticated tool that will augment human creativity rather than replace it. “AI will make everyone better, but it remains a tool,” Valient said. “Like any technology, it can be misused, but it also holds the potential to unlock new artistic frontiers.” Economic anxieties also surface, with critics warning of an AI bubble inflated by lofty valuations.
Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, insisting that while many startups will fail, the underlying technology will endure. “AI isn’t going away. The internet survived its bubble, and so will AI.
Our focus is on building a solid engine; the hype is secondary.” Funding remains modest. Immersive has secured its “first commitments” but has not disclosed amounts, describing the target as “reasonable.” Brussee warned against over‑capitalisation, noting that excess cash can breed complacency. “Startups need to stay scrappy,” he laughed. “Too much money can make you lazy.” The team itself is lean—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers.
They believe a small, focused group can make decisive architectural choices without the bureaucracy of a massive staff. De Jong explained the trade‑off: “You can’t throw a million engineers at an engine and expect it to work.
You need a tight core that iterates quickly and seizes the current window of opportunity created by AI’s rise.” Immersive is racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that will showcase a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow. The prototype is slated for release this month, already beating the original timeline by a factor of two. “We aimed for an end‑of‑year launch when we started in April; we’re now ahead of schedule,” Brussee reported.
Regarding the business model, Brussee admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” licensing approach but admits it’s too early to commit to a specific strategy. The ultimate ambition, however, is clear: to empower developers to craft more daring, artistic games without the prohibitive costs that currently stifle risk‑taking.
“Games are a complex art form, and we want to see more creativity and more bold experiments,” Brussee concluded. “If our technology can help push the industry forward, that would be amazing."