DayZ Creator Slams 'Rotting' Game Industry, Launches Free Engine

Ever feel like the game industry is stuck in a rut? DayZ creator Dean Hall sure does. He says it's "rotting from its core, outwards in every direction," and he's not mincing words about what's making it worse: AI agent-led development, reverse-engineering, and recompilation. "These have pushed things over the edge," he says.

So Hall and his studio RocketWerkz did something about it. They've released Brutal, a free, open-source C# framework that's technically not a game engine—it's a collection of software and tools—but you can use it to make games or build your own custom engine on top of it. The goal? Help developers "break free of Unity" and mainstream options like Unreal Engine, especially as companies like Epic Games dive headfirst into AI.

And it's already making waves. RimWorld, the mega-hit colony sim, just had its entire engine reworked by developer Ludeon Studios using Brutal as a foundation. This week, Ludeon announced its transition to the Waylith Engine, built in-house. "The game looks and plays exactly the same, but in our tests performance is improved by 2-4x," the studio says. The new build is already available via a beta branch on Steam, and it supposedly doesn't break mods. Ludeon also teased: "RimWorld isn't the only game on Waylith. We're working on something new!"

Hall highlights RimWorld as proof of progress. "An established studio with a very specific set of problems can take the framework and build an engine designed around their own game, instead of spending years building the underlying foundations," he observes. It's not just RimWorld, either. Felipe Falanghe, creator of Kerbal Space Program, says he's used Brutal for his next game. "I had left KSP with no rights to it 8 years prior, and had to battle uphill to do a job that was feeling more and more untenable," Falanghe says. Thanks to Brutal, his project is "very very close to being showable."

But Hall is clear: Brutal isn't for everyone. He says it's not a "tool that everyone should use to make a game." Falanghe described it as "sitting on a bar stool while everyone else using engines like Godot was sitting on comfortable couches." Hall later clarified that he thinks Godot is great tech—his beef is with Unity, Unreal, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. "I have watched Unity and Unreal consistently fail to be accountable to developers," Hall writes. He worries that as AI workflows erode competitive advantages, companies will "extract more revenue from developers who feel they cannot switch." He points to Unity's infamous 2023 install fee fiasco as a warning sign.

Hall also recalls asking Sweeney at GDC 2025 whether Unreal was accountable to developers, especially around performance and stability. He says Sweeney responded by emphasizing "making more demos and putting them on social media to counter people describing games as 'Unreal slop.'" Hall wasn't satisfied. "I continue to believe Unreal is not accountable enough to developers," he says, citing the 5% royalty on game revenue above a licensing threshold. He also skewers Epic for chasing trends: "The metaverse one year, AI the next."

So what's the catch with Brutal? There isn't one, really. "You can use BRUTAL for free, including in commercial games," Hall clarifies. "There are no royalties and we don't want a percentage of your game's revenue." All you need to do is include the copyright notice in credits, show the Brutal logo on startup, and include the Brutal notice in project files. If that doesn't work for you, a separate commercial licence is available.

It's a bold move from a developer who's never been afraid to speak his mind. And with big names like Falanghe and Ludeon already on board, Brutal might just be the shake-up the industry needs. Will you be keeping an eye on Brutal for your own projects? Let us know in the comments!