For years, Unity and Unreal have ruled the game‑development landscape, accounting for roughly seventy percent of all titles released on Steam in 2025. While open‑source alternatives like Godot have gained traction, and a handful of major studios cling to proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine, the market has largely been a duopoly. Yet three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient—believe there is still space for a fresh approach.
Their startup, Immens, aims to build an AI‑enhanced engine that tackles the pain points that have plagued developers for years. The founders’ résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game tech. Brussee helped shape the original Unreal engine at Epic Games, De Jong spent years at Guerrilla Games and later led technology at Boss Key, while Valient’s experience spans Apple and other high‑profile studios. Together they see an opening that didn’t exist just a few years ago.
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‑supported programming, you can start building from scratch again, under a lot of guidance and control, and get full functionality quickly.” Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI they employ 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 amounts of data and code,” he said.
“If we design the engine with that in mind, even a solo developer can add a custom particle system or a new rendering path without rewriting large sections of the core.” This extensibility is meant to let creators focus on their unique vision rather than wrestling with monolithic, one‑size‑fits‑all tools. The motivation behind Immens is rooted in the current economic climate of game development. Brussee describes the environment as “rough”: development costs keep climbing, budgets balloon, and studios face ever‑greater financial risk. He argues that a more efficient workflow—one that leverages AI to cut repetitive tasks—could lower the barrier to entry and keep smaller teams viable.
“We need new ways of working that let us make games faster, with fewer people, and on tighter budgets, so studios aren’t gambling their livelihoods,” he said. De Jong, the chief product officer, observes that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated. While that stability provides a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation. “The industry is facing a number of challenges, and simply repeating the old methods won’t cut it.
We need innovation, not more standardisation,” he asserted. He criticises the current “monolithic approach” of major engines, where developers must conform to proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines. By contrast, Immens intends to be a chameleon, reshaping itself to the developer’s needs.
Flexibility is a core design pillar. De Jong envisions a workflow where a developer can swap out modules, append new features, or craft bespoke tools that match their personal shortcuts and UI preferences. “If I need a tool that mirrors my own background and the exact workflow of my team, I can build it into the engine,” he explained.
This level of customisation, powered by AI assistance, aims to reduce the months‑long grind of implementing routine features. Valient also warns that AI, while powerful, can misbehave if left unchecked.
Immens therefore places the user in the driver’s seat: every AI‑generated change is logged, reproducible, and transparent. “You know what the engine is doing, you can trace its history, and you can repeat the process reliably,” he said. This transparency is crucial for creative pipelines where a designer might need to generate five characters with a specific trait in minutes rather than weeks, then discard the temporary tool once the job is done. The engine’s architecture deliberately avoids imposing a single workflow.
De Jong emphasizes that teams can decide how much AI to involve and where to apply it. The system is built on open standards, meaning files are often plain text and can be read or modified by any compatible software. “If you want to plug in Blender, Maya, or any generative tool, you can because everything talks through open formats,” Brussee noted.
This openness counters the “weird outlier” problem where many engines lock developers into closed ecosystems. There is a vocal backlash against AI in game creation, with some pundits claiming that future developers could conjure Grand Theft Auto‑scale experiences with a single prompt. Immens’s team acknowledges the hype but frames AI as a tool, not a replacement for craftsmanship. Valient believes AI will make “big games and everything in between better because it makes everybody more capable.” De Jong adds that, like any technology, AI can be misused, but the responsibility lies with creators to apply it ethically.
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 disappear when the bubble burst; many companies fell, but the technology endured.” Immens is focused on building a solid engine first; AI merely accelerates development and expands creative horizons. Funding remains modest. The founders have secured “first commitments” but have not disclosed amounts, describing the target as “reasonable.” Brussee cautions against over‑funding, noting that excess capital can breed complacency.
The company remains lean—just the three founders plus a handful of helpers—by design. De Jong explains the balance: “You can’t throw a million people at an engine and expect it to work.
You need a small, focused team to make thoughtful decisions, yet you also need enough resources to hit the market window created by AI’s rise.” Immens is currently racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing flow, slated for release later this month. The timeline has already outpaced their original expectations; what was projected for year‑end is now arriving months early. Brussee admits that predicting milestones is difficult when AI can accelerate progress dramatically.
The business model is still under discussion. While Immens admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” licensing philosophy, they consider it premature to make firm statements.
Ultimately, the founders hope their engine will enable more daring, artistic games. “We love games as complex expressions of art.
We want to see more creativity, more risk‑taking, and innovation built on this technology,” Brussee concluded. "That would be amazing."