Unity and Unreal have long held sway over the game‑development landscape, accounting for roughly 70% of Steam releases in 2025. While Godot has been gaining traction and some studios continue to rely on proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine being a prime example—the duopoly of Unity and Unreal still dominates the market.
Enter Immersive, a startup founded by three industry stalwarts: Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient. Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game‑making, with experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and Apple. The trio believes there is still space for a fresh engine, and more importantly, for a new way of building games. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that the timing is now right for a novel engine that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.
“With AI‑assisted programming, you can start from a clean slate again,” he said. “Guided by intelligent tools, you can assemble a fully‑functional engine much faster than before.” Valient, Immersive’s chief technology officer, clarified that the AI they are integrating is not the kind that generates assets from a single prompt. Instead, the AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make it highly extensible. “AI can reason over large codebases and data sets,” he explained.
“If we design the engine with that capability in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system, a bespoke animation pipeline, or any other feature without being limited to simple scripting.” This approach, Valient said, is about empowering creators to extend the engine quickly and safely. The motivation behind the project stems from the current economic pressures on developers.
Brussee described the market as "rough" and warned that production costs are spiralling. "Games are getting more expensive, and the risk to studios is growing," he noted.
"We need new workflows that cut costs, let smaller teams ship faster, and reduce the financial gamble of making a game." De Jong, Immersive’s chief product officer, observed that the engine space has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that consolidation has given developers a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation. "The industry faces many challenges, and repeating the same old processes isn’t the answer," he said.
"We need a shift from standardisation to genuine innovation." One of De Jong’s key criticisms of existing engines is their monolithic nature. Developers must adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines, which can be a barrier to creativity.
He envisions an engine that bends to the developer’s will, not the other way around. "Flexibility is essential," he argued. "You should be able to swap components, append new tools, and tailor the interface to your exact workflow.
If I need a tool with specific shortcuts and UI elements for my team, I should be able to build it without fighting the engine’s constraints." Valient also warned that AI, while powerful, can behave unpredictably if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immersive is building transparency into the engine: users will always see what the AI is doing, retain a full history of changes, and be able to reproduce results reliably. "You should know exactly why the engine made a decision," he said.
"That way you can create bespoke tools for niche tasks—like generating five characters with a particular trait—in minutes instead of weeks." The company’s philosophy is to avoid imposing a single workflow on its users. De Jong emphasized that Immersive will provide a framework that lets developers decide how much AI to incorporate and where. "The architecture will be open enough that you can choose your level of AI assistance, but robust enough that the AI understands the context correctly," he added. Interoperability is another pillar of Immersive’s design.
By relying on open, text‑based standards, the engine can read and write files that any tool can process. Brussee highlighted the advantage: "If your assets are stored in an open format, the AI can parse them, modify them, and hand them off to Blender, Maya, or any generative system without friction. This level of openness has been missing from many proprietary engines." The conversation around AI in game development is polarised. Some commentators on LinkedIn predict a future where a single prompt can spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience.
Immersive acknowledges that “click‑to‑game” concepts may eventually emerge, but they view AI primarily as a productivity enhancer, not a replacement for human creativity. Valient summed it up: "AI will make everyone better, not replace them.
Its current negative perception comes from the sheer scale of disruption it introduces." Economic concerns also swirl around the AI boom, with many fearing a bubble. Valient compared it to the dot‑com era: the internet didn’t disappear, but many over‑valued companies fell away. "We’re focused on building a solid engine; AI simply accelerates our development and expands what’s possible.
Whether the market is a bubble is uncertain, but good technology tends to survive." Funding remains modest. Immersive has secured its "first commitments" but has not disclosed amounts, describing the target as "reasonable." Brussee cautioned against excessive capital, noting that too much money can breed complacency. The team remains lean—just the three founders and a handful of helpers—by design. De Jong explained the balance: a massive team would be inefficient for a complex engine, yet a window of opportunity exists as AI reshapes the industry.
The goal is to hit that sweet spot with enough resources to move quickly without over‑extending. Currently, Immersive is racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow.
The team aimed to have this ready by the end of the year, but they are already ahead of schedule, delivering the demo months early. Brussee admitted that timeline predictions are tricky in such pioneering work.
Regarding the business model, Immersive admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” licensing approach but admits it is too early to commit to a specific strategy. Ultimately, Brussee hopes the engine will enable creators to push artistic boundaries, take risks, and bring more diverse experiences to players. "We love games and want to see more daring, creative titles built on technology like ours," he concluded.
"If we can help make that happen, it would be amazing."