Dean Hall, creator of DayZ and founder of RocketWerkz, has launched a scathing attack on the video game industry's largest companies, particularly Epic Games and Unity, accusing them of driving the sector toward collapse through unchecked corporate greed. In response, he has released Brutal, a free open-source game-making framework designed to give developers greater control over their work and reduce dependence on major engine vendors.
Hall's critique centres on what he sees as a fundamental power imbalance between developers and the companies that control the tools they rely on. He argues that studios have ceded far too much authority over their projects to corporations whose financial interests often conflict with those of the creators using their platforms. This surrender of control, he contends, has become one of the industry's most pressing but underexamined problems.
The Case Against Major Engines
Hall's frustration with Epic and Unreal appears to have crystallized during a conversation with Epic boss Tim Sweeney at the 2025 Game Developers Conference. Hall described Sweeney as someone he once admired as a programmer and visionary, but said he grew increasingly frustrated watching the engine maker chase buzzwords—the metaverse one year, artificial intelligence the next—while developers struggled with practical concerns like performance and stability.
During their exchange, Hall asked whether Unreal held itself accountable to developers on these foundational issues. Sweeney's response, according to Hall, focused on creating more demo content and promoting it on social media to counter perceptions of "Unreal slop." Hall countered that producing more content more quickly might actually be part of the problem, setting unrealistic expectations about game development difficulty. He left the conversation unsatisfied, convinced that Unreal remains insufficiently accountable to its user base.
Hall's concerns extend to Unreal's revenue model. The engine takes a five percent royalty on game revenue above a licensing threshold, a relationship Hall believes developers should be able to question rather than simply accept. He views this arrangement as emblematic of a broader issue: developers lack meaningful alternatives and therefore have little negotiating power.
Beyond accountability, Hall finds it puzzling that both Epic and Unity have invested so heavily in generative AI integration. He questions the logic of adding AI capabilities to engines designed around human-centric workflows—visual scripting systems like Unreal's blueprints, for instance. If AI models work best with language-based inputs rather than visual interfaces, Hall asks, why would retrofitting human-friendly tools for AI use make sense? The inconsistency troubles him.
The Deeper Problem with AI Strategy
Hall suggests that both engine makers may be accelerating adoption of technology that could ultimately undermine their own business models. He draws a parallel to the dot-com era, when companies hastily rebranded themselves as internet firms without understanding the implications. If generative AI tools become cheap enough for developers to build their own custom solutions, the argument goes, why would they pay for bloated, human-centric workflows designed by someone else?
This dynamic leaves Unity and Unreal in a bind. They must appear relevant by embracing AI, yet the very technology they are promoting could erode the reasons developers needed them in the first place. Hall describes the situation as ironic: the engines' own strategic choices may be sowing the seeds of their diminished relevance.
When asked directly about Brutal's relationship to generative AI, Hall was emphatic: the framework contains no generative AI, no tooling for creating AI assets, and no scripts for that purpose. The source code is public, allowing anyone to verify this claim. Brutal is a tool for assembling games and engines, not for generating content.
What Brutal Offers
Brual is not a traditional game engine but rather a framework—a distinction Hall emphasizes. This design allows flexibility: developers can use it to build games directly, or they can integrate it with other engines. RocketWerkz itself has used Brutal to create Kitten Space Agency, an early-access space simulation game released for free in pre-alpha form last autumn through the studio's own distribution platform, Ahwoo. The game operates on an optional donation model and has raised over $230,000 to date.
RimWorld's developer, Ludeon Studios, has also adopted Brutal, integrating it with its own engine, Waylith. This flexibility demonstrates Hall's vision: Brutal is meant to be a foundation that complements rather than replaces existing tools.
The framework is available publicly with full source code access, free to use for both commercial and non-commercial projects, subject only to an attribution requirement. There are no royalties and no revenue share. Hall is explicit that Brutal is not intended as a universal solution. He does not believe it should become the tool everyone uses to make games, nor is RocketWerkz attempting to build something capable of everything for everyone.
Independence Through Open Tools
Hall's broader vision extends beyond Brutal itself. He anticipates that more frameworks like it will emerge not because developers will abandon popular engines wholesale, but because the cost of building alternatives is falling dramatically. Brutal, he hopes, might serve as a lifeboat for developers seeking to reduce their dependence on major vendors.
The core principle underlying this effort is that developer independence is inseparable from tool independence. If the underlying technology is public, if source code is accessible, and if developers retain the freedom to build custom systems on top of it, they gain genuine options. Should a framework maker ever become unaccountable to its users, developers can fork the code and chart their own course. This possibility of exit, Hall argues, is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship between tool makers and their users.
Hall's own studio continues to use Unreal Engine 4 for Icarus, a co-op survival crafting game that launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this year after several years on PC. RocketWerkz has no plans to migrate Icarus to Brutal. Hall explained that such a migration would be highly disruptive, particularly given the studio's commitment to its player base. RocketWerkz has released patches every single week since Icarus launched, never missing a single week, building trust through consistency. An engine switch would jeopardize that track record.
A Broader Critique
Hall's fundamental argument is that the games industry is collapsing from within, driven by greed and a race to the bottom on pricing. He contends the sector was already heading toward unsustainability before recent advances in AI and autonomous systems, which have simply accelerated the trajectory. The solution, in his view, is not to reform existing power structures but to build alternatives that shift the balance of power back toward creators.
Hall is careful to note that he is not positioning Brutal as the inevitable winner or the only answer. Rather, he sees it as a beginning—a demonstration that alternatives are possible and that developers need not accept the current arrangement as inevitable. His hope is that by providing tools with transparent governance and genuine developer agency, the industry might begin to correct course.
The stakes, as Hall frames them, are high. Developers are only as independent as their tools allow them to be. By open-sourcing Brutal and committing to keeping it free and accountable to its users, Hall is attempting to model a different relationship between tool makers and creators—one based on transparency, shared ownership, and genuine developer autonomy rather than corporate control and extractive revenue models.
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