Unity and Unreal have long held sway over game creation, accounting for roughly 70% of Steam releases in 2025. While Godot has gained traction recently and some studios cling to proprietary tools—Capcom’s RE Engine being a notable example—the duopoly of Unity and Unreal still dominates the market. Against this backdrop, three seasoned developers—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—have launched Immens, a startup that believes a fresh engine is not only possible but necessary.
The founders’ 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. Their collective background fuels confidence that they can challenge the status quo. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that “the moment is right” to build an engine that simply didn’t exist a few years ago. He points to AI‑assisted programming as the catalyst that lets developers start from a clean slate and achieve full‑featured results quickly, under tight supervision and control.
Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI they employ is not the kind that generates content from a single prompt. Instead, it underpins the engine’s architecture, making the codebase highly extensible. "AI can reason about massive amounts of data and source code," he explains. "If we design the engine with that capability in mind, even a solo developer can add a custom particle system or any other subsystem without being confined to a narrow scripting layer.
The AI acts as a facilitator, accelerating extensions and ensuring they integrate cleanly." The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the current economic pressures of game development. Brussee describes the environment as "rough"—production costs are soaring, and small studios are increasingly vulnerable.
"We need new workflows that cut expenses and enable faster, leaner production," he says. "If we can deliver tools that let a handful of creators build high‑quality experiences on modest budgets, we break the cycle that threatens many studios’ livelihoods." De Jong, the chief product officer, observes that the engine landscape has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that consolidation provides a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation.
"The industry faces a series of challenges, and repeating the same processes won’t solve them," he notes. "We need a different approach—flexibility over monoliths." Current engines often force developers into a monolithic workflow, requiring them to adapt to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines. De Jong envisions an engine that bends to the user’s needs.
"You should be able to swap components, append new tools, and reshape the interface to match your personal workflow," he says. "Imagine building a suite of tools that mirrors your exact shortcuts, features, and UI preferences, all tailored to your team’s project." Valient acknowledges AI’s double‑edged nature. While powerful, it can veer off course if left unchecked.
Immens therefore emphasizes transparency and control: users can see the engine’s decision history, guaranteeing repeatable results. He illustrates this with a hypothetical: creating five characters with a specific trait used to require weeks of planning; now, with AI‑enhanced tools, a developer could prototype the concept over coffee and iterate rapidly, discarding the temporary tool after use.
This dramatically reduces cost and time. Flexibility is baked into Immens’s design.
The framework does not impose a single workflow; developers decide how much AI to integrate and where. De Jong stresses the importance of the AI understanding the developer’s intent correctly, ensuring that the tool remains an aid rather than a black box.
Interoperability is another cornerstone. By relying on open, text‑based standards, Immens can communicate seamlessly with popular software like Blender, Maya, or other generative tools.
"When files are human‑readable, any system can parse them," Brussee explains. "That opens the door for smarter interfaces across the entire toolchain, something proprietary engines have historically resisted." The broader AI debate in game development is heated.
Some critics warn of a future where a simple prompt spawns a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience, dubbing it "click‑to‑game". Immens’s team concedes that such extremes might eventually be possible, but they view AI primarily as a productivity enhancer. "AI will make everyone better, not replace the creative process," Valient asserts.
"It’s a tool, like any other technology, and it can be misused, but responsibility lies with us." Economic anxieties also swirl around AI, with fears of a bubble and inflated valuations. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era: the internet didn’t vanish, but many over‑hyped companies did.
Immens aims to survive by focusing on building a genuinely useful engine, using AI to accelerate development rather than as a gimmick. Whether the market is in a bubble remains uncertain, but the team believes that solid products will endure. Funding details are scarce.
Immens has secured its "first commitments" but has not disclosed amounts, describing the target as "reasonable". Brussee warns against excessive capital, noting that too much money can breed complacency.
The company remains lean—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—by design. De Jong explains the delicate balance: a complex engine cannot be built by a massive team overnight, yet timing is critical to capture the AI‑driven opportunity window. Currently, Immens is developing a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing flow, slated for release later this month.
The timeline has already outpaced initial expectations; what was projected to take until year‑end is now arriving months early. This rapid progress underscores the potential speed gains AI can deliver.
The business model is still under discussion. While Immens admires Epic’s revenue‑share philosophy—"we succeed when you succeed"—they consider it premature to commit to a specific approach. Ultimately, Brussee hopes Immens will enable games that push artistic boundaries, encourage risk‑taking, and foster innovation across the industry. "We love games and want to see more creativity," he says.
"If our technology helps developers build daring new experiences, that would be amazing."