Dean Hall, best known as the creator of DayZ, has laid out an unusually direct argument for developers taking greater control over the technology beneath their games. His proposed answer is Brutal, an open-source C# framework developed with RocketWerkz that is intended to give studios a foundation for building their own game-specific tools and engines without becoming permanently dependent on major commercial platforms.
Hall's announcement arrives alongside several notable examples of the framework's practical use. RocketWerkz is using Brutal directly for its forthcoming Kitten Space Agency. Meanwhile, Ludeon Studios has rebuilt the technology behind RimWorld into a new in-house solution called the Waylith Engine, with Hall identifying Brutal as the foundation that helped make that transition possible. Felipe Falanghe, creator of Kerbal Space Program, has also said he is using Brutal for a currently unannounced game that he describes as very close to being ready for public viewing.
The project is not being pitched as a universal replacement for every commercial engine, nor does Hall describe it as a complete game engine in the conventional sense. Instead, Brutal is a collection of software systems and tools that can be used to make games directly or, crucially, as the starting point for a studio's own purpose-built engine. That distinction is central to Hall's case: a developer may not need to spend years recreating every technical building block from scratch, but it can still retain control over the systems that matter most to its game.
Brutal is a framework, not a one-size-fits-all engine
Modern engines are often valued because they offer a vast amount out of the box: rendering pipelines, editors, platform support, asset workflows, physics, networking, and countless integrations. That convenience can be transformative for small teams, but it may also bring compromises. A general-purpose engine has to serve a broad range of projects, while a custom engine can be tightly designed around a particular game's performance requirements, content pipeline, mod support, or technical design.
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Hall is clear that Brutal is not necessarily the most comfortable starting point for every developer. Falanghe used a memorable comparison, suggesting that using Brutal can feel like sitting on a bar stool while developers using engines such as Godot are on comfortable couches. The implication is not that accessible engines are bad, but that Brutal asks more of its users. It may be less polished and less immediately accommodating than an established all-in-one package, while potentially offering the right kind of control for technically capable teams with specific needs.
Hall later stressed that he regards Godot highly. His criticism is focused more squarely on the business relationships and strategic direction surrounding Unity, Unreal Engine, and Epic Games. In Hall's view, the issue is not merely which engine has the most features. It is whether developers retain meaningful choices when the companies behind essential tools change licensing terms, introduce new fees, or direct resources toward industry trends that do not match the needs of game makers.
RimWorld's Waylith Engine provides the biggest example so far
The most concrete demonstration of the approach is RimWorld. Ludeon Studios recently announced that it had moved the game away from Unity and onto its own Waylith Engine. The studio said the game should look and play the same, but reported performance gains of between two and four times in its tests. A beta build is already available through Steam, and Ludeon has said that mods should not be broken by the change.
For a long-running game with a substantial modding community, an engine migration is an ambitious undertaking. It involves much more than making an existing game run somewhere else. The team must preserve behavior that players expect, maintain compatibility with a huge body of user-created content, and avoid introducing disruptive differences across systems that may have accumulated for years. Ludeon's claim that it extracted the remaining Unity components from RimWorld is therefore a significant milestone for the studio's independence.
Hall highlighted that work as evidence of what a framework can enable. Rather than beginning at zero, an established developer with a clearly defined set of technical challenges can take an existing base and construct an engine around its own game. That can reduce the amount of foundational work involved while allowing the resulting toolset to reflect the studio's priorities instead of those of a third-party engine vendor.
Ludeon has also confirmed that RimWorld is not the only project using Waylith. The developer said it is working on something new, although it has not shared further details. That means the engine may become more than a maintenance solution for one of PC gaming's most enduring colony simulations; it could serve as the technological base for future Ludeon projects.
Falanghe returns to development with a new project
Falanghe's involvement gives Brutal another high-profile supporter. He created Kerbal Space Program, a spaceflight game whose detailed systems and simulation have been embraced well beyond traditional game audiences, including scientists and astronauts. Falanghe said he left Kerbal Space Program eight years ago without retaining rights to the property and then faced an uphill path while trying to continue his work in game development.
He has now said that Brutal, along with an intensive return to development work, has supported his new project. While no title, release window, or platform details have been announced, Falanghe stated that the game is very close to being showable. For now, that is the extent of what is known, but his participation underscores the kind of experienced developer Hall hopes the framework can assist: someone with a particular vision who wants a technical base that can be shaped around it.
Hall also emphasized that Brutal is not the work of one individual. He credited the wider RocketWerkz team and collaborators such as Falanghe, while noting that people with experience at some of the world's largest game companies have joined the effort. That collective experience matters because engine and framework development is rarely glamorous. It requires sustained work on tooling, reliability, debugging, performance, documentation, build systems, and the many hidden processes that make game production possible.
Concerns over licensing, AI, and vendor dependence
Hall framed Brutal as a response to what he sees as a worsening imbalance between game creators and the companies supplying their core technology. He argued that the industry has been deteriorating for some time and that advances in AI-led workflows, reverse engineering, and recompilation have accelerated the pressure. His concern is that as established software companies see traditional competitive advantages weaken, they may seek more revenue from developers who feel unable to move away from their tools.
That revenue could come through royalties, subscriptions, or stricter licensing rules. The concern has particular resonance following Unity's 2023 attempt to introduce installation-based fees, a plan that generated widespread backlash and was subsequently changed. For many developers, the episode became a reminder that a game's technology stack can create long-term business risk even after production has begun.
Hall also recounted questioning Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney during the GDC 2025 Tencent Summit about whether Unreal Engine was sufficiently accountable to developers, especially on performance and stability. Hall said Sweeney's response centered on producing more demonstrations and sharing them on social media to counter the phrase "Unreal slop." Hall remained dissatisfied, arguing that developers should scrutinize a model in which Unreal can collect a 5% royalty on revenue above its licensing threshold.
His broader criticism is that large technology companies can become distracted by changing corporate priorities, pointing to interest in the metaverse followed by AI. That does not mean Unreal or Unity lack value; both remain major tools in modern game production. But Hall's position is that the convenience they offer should not prevent developers from questioning the degree of leverage those platforms hold.
An open-source option with conditions
Brutal can be used for free, including in commercial games, and Hall says RocketWerkz does not want royalties or a share of a game's revenue. Its open-source model does include attribution requirements. Users are expected to retain the copyright notice in their credits, show the Brutal logo at startup, and include the Brutal notice in project files. Studios that do not wish to meet those requirements can arrange a separate commercial licence.
Those terms distinguish Brutal from the royalty arrangements that concern Hall, while still asking projects built with the framework to visibly acknowledge it. More importantly, the source code is public. Hall argues that this means developers can examine it, modify it, build their own systems on top of it, and fork the project if RocketWerkz ever ceases to act in their interests.
That final point may be the most important part of the announcement. Brutal is not being presented as a promise that every studio should abandon established engines tomorrow. It is an argument for optionality. A small team may still be best served by Unity, Unreal, Godot, or another ready-made engine. But for teams prepared to invest in their own technology, Brutal is intended to make self-reliance more attainable.
With Kitten Space Agency, RimWorld's Waylith migration, and Falanghe's unannounced game all attached to the framework, RocketWerkz now has several meaningful proof points. Whether Brutal becomes a widely adopted foundation remains uncertain. Its early message, however, is clear: developers who control more of their tools may have more power to decide how they make, maintain, and monetize their games.
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