Immens: Three Epic Games Veterans Are Developing an AI-Powered Game Engine

The game engine market is more consolidated than ever. On one side, Unreal Engine; on the other, Unity. Together, they represent the technological foundation of around 70% of the video games published on Steam in recent years, offering mature ecosystems, advanced tools, and established workflows. However, according to three industry veterans from Epic Games, this standardization may have reached its limits.

This belief has led to the creation of Immens, a new company founded by Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient, professionals who have contributed to the development of Unreal Engine and some of the most important projects in the video game industry. Their goal is not simply to create another graphics engine, but to rethink the very concept of a game engine in the age of artificial intelligence.

Breaking the "doom cycle" of game development

According to the founders, the industry is experiencing what they describe as a genuine "doom cycle": ever-increasing budgets, larger and larger teams, and longer development times. This model is making it increasingly difficult for independent studios and smaller teams to compete in the market.

The idea behind Immens is that artificial intelligence can help break this vicious cycle—not by replacing developers, but by dramatically increasing their productivity. Instead of focusing on automatically generating content through prompts, AI is integrated directly into the engine's architecture to facilitate the creation of custom tools, proprietary systems, and tailored workflows.

An engine designed to be extended

One of the most interesting aspects of the project is its open and modular approach.

While many modern engines are perceived as monolithic systems, Immens aims for a structure based on open formats, readable files, and full interoperability with external tools. Applications such as Blender, Maya, and future AI-powered tools will be able to communicate directly with the engine without having to rely on closed pipelines or proprietary formats.

The goal is to allow small teams to develop advanced features without having to modify the source code of a massive framework or adapt to workflows imposed from above.

In other words, if a studio wants to create a proprietary particle system, a specialized editor, or an automated workflow for its game, it should be able to do so quickly and naturally, using AI as a technical assistant rather than as a replacement for creative work.

AI as an accelerator, not a replacement

The Immens team emphasizes one fundamental aspect: artificial intelligence should operate within transparent, verifiable, and controllable processes.

The idea is not to hand over production to a system that generates code or content without supervision, but rather to use AI models that can understand the context of a project, suggest modifications, and accelerate the implementation of new features while keeping developers firmly in control.

This vision differs from many of the AI applications currently dominating the discussion in the gaming industry, which often focus on the automatic generation of assets or content. Immens instead sees the greatest potential in the intelligent automation of production processes and software engineering.

A challenging but fascinating proposition

The game engine market is certainly not an easy one to enter. Unreal Engine and Unity have enormous communities, established ecosystems, and years of technological head start.

However, the current moment could favor the emergence of new approaches. The growing adoption of AI in software development is lowering some of the barriers that once made building an engine from scratch almost impossible.

The founders of Immens argue that today, a small team can achieve results that would have required much larger organizations just a few years ago, thanks to AI-assisted programming tools.

Why this matters

For anyone working with Unreal Engine, Unity, or Godot, the Immens project represents an interesting signal: the game engine market could be entering a new phase of innovation.

If the promise of a truly open, highly extensible engine designed from the ground up to work alongside AI systems becomes a reality, we could see the emergence of new workflows capable of reducing production times and costs, making the development of complex experiences more accessible even to smaller teams.

For now, Immens is still in its early stages of development, but the combination of industry experience, an open approach, and intelligent AI integration makes the project one of the most interesting developments to watch in the coming months.

Link to the LinkedIn post by Sjoerd De Jong, Product Lead at Immens, and to the GamesIndustry.biz article for more information.