Dean Hall, the creator of DayZ, Icarus, and Kitten Space Agency, has publicly condemned what he describes as "greed" that is "rotting" the game industry from within. In a broad critique, Hall specifically targeted engine developers Epic Games for Unreal Engine and Unity, while simultaneously introducing his own open-source, free game-making framework called Brutal.
"Our industry is rotting from its core," Hall stated in a Reddit post. He elaborated that this decay is driven by a focus on profit and a "race to the bottom on price," exacerbated by the increasing availability of powerful development tools like AI. Hall believes that developers have "surrendered an extraordinary amount of control" to companies whose interests may not align with their own.
Brutal is presented as a framework, distinct from a full game engine. This allows developers the flexibility to use it as a base for their own projects, as Hall's studio RocketWerkz has done with Kitten Space Agency, or to integrate it with other engines, similar to how Ludeon Studios uses it with its Waylith engine for RimWorld.
RocketWerkz is making the Brutal framework publicly available with its source code, free for use in commercial games. The only requirement is attribution, with no royalties or revenue share expected. "There are no royalties and we don't want a percentage of your game's revenue," Hall confirmed.
Hall shared that the impetus for Brutal arose partly from a question posed to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney at the Game Developers Conference 2025. Hall expressed admiration for Sweeney's past work but grew frustrated with industry discussions dominated by buzzwords like "metaverse" and "AI," while developers grappled with practical issues such as performance and stability.
When Hall questioned Sweeney about Unreal Engine's accountability to developers on these matters, he reportedly received a response focused on creating more social media demos to counteract negative perceptions of the engine. Hall countered that rapid development might actually contribute to false expectations about the ease of game creation.
"I was not satisfied with his answer," Hall continued, asserting that Unreal Engine remains insufficiently accountable to developers, especially given its potential five percent royalty on game revenue above a certain threshold. He feels developers should not accept this relationship without scrutiny.
Hall envisions more frameworks like Brutal emerging, not necessarily to replace popular engines entirely, but because the cost of creating alternatives is rapidly decreasing. He hopes Brutal can serve as a "lifeboat" for developers. "This technology is a small step towards changing the balance of power," Hall concluded. "If the tools are public, if you have the source code, and if you're free to build your own systems on top of them, you have options." He added that developers should have the ability to fork the framework if the creators cease to be accountable to them, emphasizing that "You are only as independent as your tools are. This is how we fight back."
Hall's studio, RocketWerkz, previously developed the survival game Icarus, which utilizes Unreal Engine 4. Kitten Space Agency, a free pre-alpha title with an optional donation model, was released last autumn via RocketWerkz's distribution platform, Ahwoo, and has raised over $230,000. Icarus was also released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S earlier this year.