Dean Hall, creator of DayZ, believes that "the game industry has been rotting from the core outward for some time," a situation accelerated by AI-driven development processes and the rise of reverse engineering and recompilation technologies. "These factors have caused the situation to spiral completely out of control," he stated. Consequently, he and his studio, RocketWerkz, have launched and open-sourced a new alternative to game engines, aiming to help developers "break free from Unity's grasp" and escape mainstream commercial engines like Unreal Engine—especially as engine providers like Epic Games dive headfirst into the AI wave.
In a long post on the Reddit game development forum, Hall explained the background and design intentions behind this framework named "Brutal." It is a free C# framework, strictly speaking not a game engine (a game engine is a collection of software and tools for making games), but it can be used directly for game development or serve as a foundation for developers to build custom game engines.
RocketWerkz studio's upcoming game, Little Kitten Space Agency, directly utilizes the Brutal framework. Hall also revealed that Ludeon Studios, the developer behind the hit colony simulation game RimWorld, and its creator Tynan Sylvester, used this framework to rebuild the game's entire engine.
Just this week, Ludeon Studios announced that the game has switched to the Waylith engine—"an internal engine developed independently by Ludeon Studios. The game's visuals and gameplay remain unchanged, but our tests show a 2x to 4x performance improvement." This new version of RimWorld is available to players via Steam's testing branch and reportedly does not break existing mods.
The studio added: "The Waylith engine is not just for RimWorld. We are developing new titles! Although it will be some time before we can reveal more details, we couldn't resist giving everyone a heads-up."
Hall stated, "Their team brilliantly stripped all traces of Unity from RimWorld, creating their proprietary Waylith engine," citing RimWorld as proof of the framework's viability. He pointed out: "Mature studios with specific development pain points can build engines tailored to their games based on this framework, without spending years building underlying architecture from scratch."
Additionally, Felipe Falanghe, creator of Kerbal Space Program, announced that he is using Brutal to develop his next game. Replying to Hall's post, Falanghe said, "Eight years ago, I left the Kerbal Space Program project and no longer held the relevant copyrights, making subsequent development difficult and progress increasingly hard." He credited the Brutal framework and his quick refresh of game development knowledge for bringing the project "very close to a public release stage."
Hall clarified several points. First, this project is not solely his achievement; many members of RocketWerkz studio participated in its development, and contributions from collaborators like Felipe Falanghe were crucial. Additionally, after years of research and development, "many talents from top global game companies have joined us, bringing their experience to this cause."
Secondly, this toolset is not "suitable for everyone to make games," but for the right developers and projects, it is an ideal choice.
Falanghe described Brutal as feeling like "sitting on a bar stool while others are comfortably seated on the sofa of engines like Godot." In my view, this means: it may not be as comprehensive or easy to pick up as traditional game engines, but it might perfectly meet your needs. Hall later clarified that he considers Godot, the engine behind Slay the Spire 2, to be an excellent technical product. His real targets are Unity, Unreal Engine, and Epic's CEO, Tim Sweeney.
Hall wrote, "I have watched Unity and Unreal Engine consistently fail to take proper responsibility towards developers. As automated workflows begin to erode the competitive advantages that legacy software companies rely on, this problem will only worsen."
"My concern is that as these advantages diminish, these companies will intensify their efforts to extract more revenue from developers who cannot switch to other tools—whether through revenue shares, subscriptions, or stricter licensing terms."
This situation has precedents, which Falanghe cited as a warning to developers: In 2023, Unity abruptly introduced a high installation fee policy, only to retract it amid widespread outrage.
Hall recalled Sweeney's remarks at the Tencent Summit during the 2025 Game Developers Conference. He asked the CEO "whether he believed Unreal Engine had a responsibility to developers, particularly regarding performance and stability." Sweeney's response emphasized the need to "post more demo videos on social media to counter the narrative that games are 'Unreal Engine junk.'"
Hall continued, "I was not satisfied with that answer and have always believed that Unreal Engine has failed in its responsibility to developers. Especially since it takes a 5% royalty share from game revenues exceeding the licensing threshold. I don't believe developers should accept this unequal relationship without question."
Hall also criticized Epic for chasing trends rather than focusing on the product itself and user needs. "One year it's the metaverse, the next it's AI," he said. It's easy to imagine Hall's reaction when Epic Games smugly announced that they used "casual coding" to create a new store page because "programming is too hard."
Hall believes that "the freedom of tools determines the independence of developers," which is why frameworks like Brutal represent "our way of fighting back."
He clarified: "Everyone can use BRUTAL for free, including for commercial game development. There are no revenue-sharing fees, and we will not take a cut from your game's earnings." The only requirement for using this open-source project is attribution: include a copyright notice in the credits, display the Brutal logo on the startup screen, and include Brutal's usage instructions in the project files. Hall stated, "If you prefer not to comply with these requirements, we can negotiate a separate commercial license."
There are multiple layers of meaning behind this event. The core conclusion is: some of today's most renowned and technically顶尖 developers—as Hall noted, Kerbal Space Program is so complete that even real "scientists and astronauts" reference it—agree that while the tide in the game industry is indeed shifting, developers do not need to plunge into the AI quagmire alongside companies like Unity; they can build their own tools instead.
Hall added, "This technology is a small step toward changing the balance of power in the industry. If the tools are public, you have access to the source code and the freedom to build your own systems on top of them, giving you choices. If one day we ourselves fail to be responsible to developers, they can simply fork this framework and go their own way. This point is crucial to me."