•Dean Hall, the creator of DayZ, Icarus and Kitten Space Agency, has launched a fierce attack on some of the biggest game companies, accusing them of a “greed” that he says is “rotting” the industry from its core. He singled out engine-makers Epic (Unreal) and Unity while backing his criticism by releasing an open-sourced, free alternative to their engines: a game-making framework called Brutal.
“Our industry is rotting from its core,” Hall wrote in an expansive post on Reddit, “outwards in every direction, and it has been for some time. Driven by greed, driven by a race to the bottom on price.”
Hall argued that developers have surrendered significant control over their work to companies whose interests are not aligned with theirs.
“Developers have surrendered an extraordinary amount of control over their work to companies whose interests aren’t necessarily aligned with their own. So we’re doing something about it.”
Dean Hall, Reddit post
Brutal is a framework rather than a game engine, allowing users either to make games directly or to use another engine alongside it — as Ludeon has done for RimWorld with its own Waylith engine. The source code is being made publicly available and free to use, including for commercial projects, subject only to an attribution requirement.
“There are no royalties and we don’t want a percentage of your game’s revenue,” Hall wrote.
Hall was clear that Brutal is not intended as a universal replacement. “I do not believe this is the tool that everyone should use to make a game,” he said, adding: “We are not trying to make something that can do everything for everyone.”
The project’s origins trace back to a question Hall asked Epic boss Tim Sweeney during a Game Developers Conference 2025 talk. Hall described Sweeney as once being “a hero of mine,” but said he had become frustrated with how discussions revolved around the latest buzzwords rather than practical developer concerns.
Hall recalled asking whether Unreal was accountable to developers over issues such as performance and stability, saying Sweeney apparently replied something about making more demos and posting them on social media to counter descriptions of games as “Unreal slop”. Hall countered that producing things faster could itself be part of the problem by creating false expectations about how easy game-making is.
“I was not satisfied with his answer,” Hall said, continuing: “I continue to believe Unreal is not accountable enough to developers. Particularly when it can take a five percent royalty on game revenue above its licensing threshold.”
Hall also took aim at engine makers’ embrace of generative AI, calling it “confusing” that both Unreal and Unity devote so much effort to the technology given their human-centric workflows.
“What, specifically, is it about Unreal — which has long focused on visual scripting, blueprints, and such — that would make it good for AI work?”
Dean Hall
Hall suggested the technology engines are adopting could ultimately undermine their own business models, comparing it to the dot-com era “when companies tried to slap a coat of paint on themselves and suddenly become internet companies.”
“Unreal and Unity who are tearing themselves down. Their greed and lack of accountability to developers has left them completely unable to reconcile their need to appear relevant,” he wrote.
Hall said he expected more frameworks like Brutal to emerge, not because developers would abandon popular engines — his own Icarus uses Unreal Engine 4 — but because the cost of building alternatives is set to fall dramatically. “You are only as independent as your tools are,” he concluded. “This is how we fight back.”
Hall clarified that Brutal’s relationship with generative AI: “There is no generative AI inside it, no tooling or scripts for making generative AI assets. Anyone can see for themselves as the repository is public. The framework is a tool for putting a game or engine together, not for generating anything.”
On Icarus specifically, Hall said RocketWerkz has no plans to remove Unreal Engine 4 from the title. While the studio has “sunset” Unreal among its engines of use, switching would require substantial additional work.
“Migrating Icarus would be very disruptive,” Hall said. “and our players are loyal and we’ve earned their trust through patches every single week for years now since launch, not missing one.”
RocketWerkz distributes Kitten Space Agency via its own platform Ahwoo, using an optional donation business model that has raised more than $230,000 so far.
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