Dean Hall has released Brutal, an open-source game development framework built in C# that carries no royalties and is free for commercial use — developers only need to list a Brutal copyright notice in their credits. The DayZ creator developed it through two of his companies, Ahwoo and RocketWerkz, with work starting in 2022.

Brutal has already shipped beyond the lab. Six projects across three different studios have used it, including RocketWerkz's Kitten Space Adventure and the new Waylith engine that powers Ludeon Studios' RimWorld. Kerbal Space Program creator Felipe Falanghe is also building on the framework.

Not a competitor to Unity and Unreal — exactly. Hall was explicit in an extensive Reddit post: Brutal is a framework, not a game engine. You can make games directly with it, as RocketWerkz did with Kitten Space Agency. Or you can use it to build your own engine, which is the route Ludeon Studios took.

What's under the hood?

The core is a custom interoperability layer that gives C# "access to native APIs and libraries," supported by a set of purpose-built libraries. Hall says the project was created with an "obsessive focus on reducing allocations and unnecessary overhead." The design philosophy is narrow and deliberate: "doing a few low-level things extremely well."

Why build it at all?

Hall's motivation is blunt. He argues that Unity and Unreal have "consistently" failed to be held accountable to developers, and he expects that problem to deepen as agentic AI workflows erode the competitive moats protecting established software companies.

"My concern is that as those advantages erode, the companies involved will increasingly look to extract more revenue from developers who feel they cannot switch," Hall wrote. "Whether through royalties, subscriptions, or more restrictive licensing."

He named Unity's long list of disputes with developers directly. He also singled out Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney — calling him a "powerhouse of a programmer" — while arguing Epic has chased trends like the metaverse and AI while developers were "struggling with performance, stability, and the practical consequences of decisions made by engine vendors."

What does this change for studios?

For teams weighing engine risk, Brutal adds a third path that didn't realistically exist before: a permissively licensed, source-available foundation for building custom tech without paying royalties or committing to a vendor's pricing roadmap. That's the practical stake for mid-sized studios burned by licensing shifts in recent years.

Hall framed the dependency problem in terms any developer will recognize. "Imagine your ability to work on your own game depending on a decision made by a company you have absolutely no control over," he wrote.

He's not calling for an exodus, though. "I don't think any of this means developers should abandon Unity or Unreal tomorrow. For many projects, they're absolutely the right choice, and I'm not pretending Brutal could replace what they provide." His diagnosis is structural: an industry that treats dependence on a handful of enormous technology companies as inevitable. "It isn't inevitable."

A lifeboat, not a revolution

Hall predicts more frameworks like Brutal will emerge — not because studios will abandon established engines en masse, but because the cost of building alternatives is about to fall dramatically. "BRUTAL won't solve all of the industry's problems, but for some developers it might offer a lifeboat," he wrote.

The framework's governance carries the same logic. If Brutal's own maintainers stop being accountable to developers, users can fork it and go their own way. "That's important to me," Hall said.

The signal to watch now is adoption: whether studios beyond RocketWerkz, Ludeon and Falanghe's project treat Brutal as a serious foundation, or a curiosity from one of the industry's better-known independents.