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Dean Hall, known for his work on DayZ, has introduced Brutal, an open-source game development framework developed through his companies, Ahwoo and RocketWerkz. The project, which began in 2022, is available for free use in commercial titles without royalties, provided developers include a copyright notice.
Brutal functions as an interoperability layer written in C#, granting access to native APIs and libraries. Hall emphasizes that it is not a full game engine, but rather a framework designed with a focus on minimizing allocations and overhead. It has already been utilized in six projects, including RocketWerkz's Kitten Space Adventure and the Waylith engine used by Ludeon Studios for Rimworld.
Hall developed Brutal as a response to concerns regarding the lack of developer accountability from major engine providers like Unity and Epic Games. He expressed apprehension that these companies might increasingly prioritize revenue extraction through restrictive licensing or subscriptions as their competitive advantages shift.
While Hall does not suggest that developers immediately abandon established engines, he views Brutal as a potential lifeboat. By providing public source code, he aims to offer developers more autonomy and the ability to fork the framework if necessary, thereby challenging the industry's growing dependence on a few large technology corporations.
