For many years, Unity and Unreal have ruled the game‑development landscape, powering roughly 70 % of the titles released on Steam in 2025. While open‑source alternatives like Godot have gained traction and some studios cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine, for instance—the market has largely been a duopoly.
Against this backdrop, three seasoned industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—have launched Immens, a fresh game‑engine project that aims to challenge the status quo and inject new possibilities into the creation pipeline. The founders bring a résumé that reads like a Who’s Who of modern gaming: experience at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that the timing is ripe for a new engine, noting that “an opportunity now exists that simply didn’t exist a couple of years ago.” He believes that AI‑assisted programming can revive the spirit of building tools from the ground up, allowing developers to achieve full‑featured functionality much more quickly than before.
Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, is careful to distinguish their use of AI from the hype‑driven “prompt‑to‑content” narrative that dominates many headlines. For Immens, AI is a means of making the engine itself more extensible. “AI can reason about massive codebases and data sets,” he explains. “If we design the underlying architecture 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.” In practice, this means the engine is built to be a living framework that developers can shape, rather than a monolithic black box they must adapt to.
The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the harsh economic realities of contemporary game development. Brussee describes the current climate as “rough,” emphasizing that production costs keep climbing and the risk of financial ruin grows with each new project. He asks whether the industry can discover more efficient workflows that lower budgets, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines.
The answer, according to the Immens team, lies in leveraging AI to automate repetitive tasks, streamline iteration, and ultimately free creators to focus on the artistic aspects of their work. De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine market has entered a phase of “standardisation and consolidation.” While this has produced solid, reliable tools, it has also stifled innovation.
“Continuing to do exactly what we’ve always done isn’t enough,” he says. “We need a different approach—one that prioritises flexibility over rigidity.” He criticises the “monolithic approach” of existing engines, where developers must conform to proprietary file formats and fixed pipelines. With AI, Immens aims to become an adaptive platform that molds itself to the user’s needs, allowing developers to swap components, append new features, and craft bespoke tools that match their personal workflows.
Valient acknowledges that AI is not a silver bullet; it can veer off course if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immens is designed to keep the user in the driver’s seat. Every AI‑generated action is logged, repeatable, and fully transparent, so developers can audit and adjust the process as needed.
He illustrates the potential with a simple example: generating five characters with a specific trait used to require weeks of planning and coding, but with AI‑assisted tools, a developer could sketch the idea over coffee and have a functional prototype in minutes. Such rapid prototyping, he argues, can dramatically reduce the cost of iteration. Flexibility is baked into Immens’s architecture. De Jong stresses that the engine does not impose a single workflow; instead, it provides a modular framework that lets teams decide how much AI to employ and where.
This openness extends to interoperability: Immens adopts open, text‑based standards so that assets from Blender, Maya, or other generative tools can be imported without friction. “When files are human‑readable, any AI can parse and manipulate them,” Brussee notes.
This contrasts with many proprietary engines that act as closed ecosystems, hindering seamless integration with third‑party software. The conversation around AI in game development is polarized. Some commentators on LinkedIn hype “click‑to‑game” engines that could conjure Grand Theft Auto‑scale experiences from a single prompt.
Immens’s founders see such visions as aspirational but caution that AI should be treated as a powerful tool, not a replacement for human creativity. Valient believes AI will elevate the entire industry, making developers more capable, while De Jong stresses the responsibility to wield the technology ethically, acknowledging that any tool can be misused. Economic concerns also loom large. Critics warn that the AI boom may be a bubble, inflating valuations without solid fundamentals.
Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many startups vanished, the underlying internet persisted and matured. He argues that Immens is focused on building a genuinely useful engine; AI merely accelerates their development and expands creative horizons. Whether the market is in a bubble remains uncertain, but the team remains pragmatic, preparing for both growth and correction.
Funding for Immens is still in its early stages. The company has secured “first commitments” but has not disclosed exact figures, describing the target amount as “reasonable.” Brussee warns against over‑capitalisation, suggesting that excess cash can breed complacency. The team deliberately remains lean—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—because building a sophisticated engine requires focused decision‑making rather than a massive workforce.
Balancing resources and timing is a strategic challenge. De Jong explains that a large team does not guarantee faster progress; instead, a small, agile group can iterate more thoughtfully.
At the same time, there is a limited window to capture the AI‑driven momentum reshaping the industry. The founders are navigating this trade‑off, aiming to deliver a proof‑of‑concept that showcases a generative‑AI‑powered editing workflow within the month. Timeline expectations have already been exceeded.
Brussee recounts that when Immens launched in April, the goal was a year‑long development cycle; they are now delivering the demo roughly twice as fast. While exact release dates remain fluid, this early acceleration hints at the efficiency gains the team hopes AI will continue to provide. The business model is still under discussion. Immens admires Epic Games’ “we succeed when you succeed” licensing philosophy, but Brussee admits it is too early to commit to a specific revenue structure.
Ultimately, the founders hope their engine will empower creators to push artistic boundaries, take risks, and innovate in ways that current tools constrain. In summary, Immens represents a bold attempt to re‑imagine the game‑engine paradigm by marrying AI’s reasoning capabilities with a modular, open architecture. By giving developers granular control, fostering interoperability, and emphasizing rapid, low‑cost iteration, the trio aims to break the cycle of ever‑rising production costs that has plagued the industry.
If successful, their approach could usher in a new era where smaller teams compete on equal footing with major studios, and where creativity, rather than budget, becomes the primary driver of game development.