Arjan Brussee, co-founder of Guerrilla Games and a longtime technical director at Epic Games, has left the American studio to develop a new game engine he calls “the Immense Engine,” positioning it as a fully European alternative to Unreal Engine and Unity.
An AI-Native Engine From a Veteran Developer
Brussee revealed his plans this week on the Dutch tech podcast De Technoloog, where he described a vision for engine development built from the ground up around artificial intelligence. Unlike existing engines designed for manual workflows, the Immense Engine will incorporate AI agents as core modules, with large language models integrated directly into the software framework.
“If you are smart and know how to put a good framework of AI agents to work, you can do the work of ten or fifteen people,” Brussee said, according to translated remarks reported by Video Games Chronicle. He added that “the rise of AI means that we need to approach the development of this kind of crucial software differently”.
A European Sovereignty Play
The engine is explicitly framed as a matter of European technological independence. “No one is currently making an engine that is fully European-hosted, built by Europeans, and complies with European rules and guidelines,” Brussee said. He is developing the project through a Dutch startup, with applications intended to extend well beyond gaming into defence and logistics — sectors where European data sovereignty and regulatory compliance carry particular weight.
The announcement comes amid a broader European push to reduce reliance on American technology platforms. Gizmodo noted that the French government recently began transitioning from Windows to Linux, part of a growing pattern of digital sovereignty efforts across the continent.
Credibility and Caution
Brussee’s credentials lend weight to the undertaking. He co-founded Guerrilla Games, the Amsterdam-based studio behind the Killzone and Horizon series, and spent years at Epic Games working on Fortnite and Unreal Engine as technical director. He also co-created Jazz Jackrabbit with Epic’s Tim Sweeney in the 1990s.
Still, no launch date, technical specifications, or funding details have been disclosed. European game engines have struggled historically — Germany’s CryEngine, associated with the Far Cry franchise, never achieved broad adoption outside first-person shooters. Whether the Immense Engine can overcome similar challenges remains an open question, though Brussee’s track record on both sides of the Atlantic gives the effort a foundation few competitors could claim.
