For many years, Unity and Unreal have been the de‑facto platforms for video‑game creation, accounting for roughly 70 % of all titles launched on Steam in 2025. While open‑source alternatives like Godot have gained traction, the market remains heavily dominated by these two powerhouses, with a few large studios still opting for proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine. In this landscape, three seasoned industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—believe there is still room for a fresh approach.
Their startup, Immens, is set to build a new, AI‑enhanced game engine that they argue can break the entrenched cycle of ever‑increasing costs and development timelines. The founders’ résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game development.
Brussee helped launch the original Unity, De Jong contributed to titles at Guerrilla Games, and Valient has experience at Epic Games, Apple, and several other high‑profile studios. Together they see an opportunity that didn’t exist a few years ago: leveraging AI‑assisted programming to recreate the sense of building a game engine from the ground up, but with far less manual effort. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that AI now allows developers to "start making things from scratch again" under a framework that still offers strong guidance and control. He envisions an environment where full‑featured functionality can be assembled quickly, freeing creators from the slow, costly iteration cycles that currently dominate the industry.
Valient, Immens’ chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI component is not about generating assets via simple prompts. Instead, the technology is woven into the engine’s architecture to make the codebase highly extensible. "AI can reason about massive amounts of data and source code," he says. "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 superficial scripting." The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the harsh economic realities facing developers today.
Brussee describes the current market as "rough," noting that production budgets are ballooning and the risk of failure is climbing. "We need new ways of working that lower costs, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines," he argues. The goal is to give creators a toolset that lets them experiment without jeopardising their studios’ financial stability.
De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated. While this has produced a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation.
"The industry is at a crossroads," he says. "Continuing to do exactly what we’ve always done won’t solve the emerging challenges.
We need a different paradigm, one that embraces flexibility and creativity." One of the pain points with existing engines is their monolithic nature. Developers must conform to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows, often spending weeks or months building tools that suit their specific needs. De Jong envisions an engine that adapts to the user rather than forcing the user to adapt to it. "You should be able to swap components, append new modules, or rewrite parts of the pipeline to match your personal workflow," he explains.
"Imagine a tool that mirrors your exact shortcuts, UI preferences, and feature set, all built on top of a flexible core." Valient acknowledges that AI is a double‑edged sword. While it is "really powerful," it can also veer off course if not carefully supervised. To mitigate this, Immens is being built with transparency in mind: developers will see exactly what the AI is doing, retain a full history of changes, and be able to reproduce results reliably. This level of control is crucial for creative pipelines where a designer might need to generate five characters with a unique trait in minutes—a task that previously could have taken weeks.
The engine’s architecture deliberately avoids imposing a single workflow. De Jong stresses that teams can decide how much AI assistance they want and where to apply it. The framework is designed to be modular, allowing developers to plug in AI where it adds value while keeping other parts of the pipeline manual if desired.
Interoperability is another cornerstone of Immens. By embracing open standards and text‑based file formats, the engine can communicate seamlessly with popular tools such as Blender, Maya, or any generative‑AI suite. "When files are human‑readable, any program can parse them," Brussee notes. "This opens the door to smarter interfaces across the entire toolchain, something proprietary engines have historically resisted." There is a vocal backlash against AI in game development, often fueled by sensational claims that a single prompt could spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale experience.
Immens’ team sees this as a misunderstanding of AI’s role. While they acknowledge that “click‑to‑game” concepts may eventually emerge, they view AI primarily as a productivity enhancer—a tool that makes developers better, not a replacement for human creativity. Economic concerns also swirl around the AI boom, with many warning of a bubble. Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many companies will fall, the underlying technology rarely disappears.
"AI isn’t going away; the internet didn’t vanish after the bubble burst," he says. "Our focus is on building a solid engine that leverages AI to accelerate development, not on chasing hype." Funding for Immens remains modest.
The founders have secured initial commitments but have not disclosed exact figures, describing the amount as "reasonable." Brussee warns against over‑funding, suggesting that too much capital can breed complacency. The company remains a lean operation, consisting of the three founders and a handful of helpers.
This small size is intentional; building an engine is a complex endeavor that benefits from focused decision‑making rather than a massive, unwieldy team. Immens is currently developing 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 have already achieved the milestone in half the expected time, illustrating the speed gains they claim AI can deliver.
Regarding the business model, Brussee admires Epic Games’ philosophy of succeeding when developers succeed, but he admits it is too early to commit to a specific revenue structure. The overarching ambition, however, is clear: to empower creators to push the medium forward, take more artistic risks, and produce innovative experiences that might otherwise be out of reach. In summary, Immens seeks to challenge the duopoly of Unity and Unreal by offering an AI‑centric, highly extensible engine that prioritizes flexibility, transparency, and open standards.
If successful, it could provide smaller studios with a viable path to create high‑quality games without the prohibitive costs that currently dominate the industry. The ultimate test will be whether this vision can translate into a robust, user‑friendly product that gains traction among developers hungry for change.