In June, Sjoerd De Jong—an Unreal Engine modder and map creator turned full-time specialist at Epic Games—announced that he was leaving the company after 12 years as a senior director and Unreal Engine “lead evangelist.” In a cryptic departure message, he said the games industry was at a “pivotal point,” and he’s aiming to “work out how to adapt and excel” at addressing the changing needs of videogame development.
We now have a clearer idea of De Jong’s plans for navigating the games industry’s future. In an interview with This Week in Videogames, De Jong revealed what he’s tackling next: He’s building a game engine of his own.
De Jong’s nascent game engine competitor is called the Immens Engine, and he’s building it alongside a small team of co-founders that includes former Epic technical director Arjan Brussee.
De Jong intends for Immens to serve as an alternative to the dominance of Unreal and Unity, whose market influence he said has led to a “stagnation” in game development for which challengers like Godot have only just recently started to emerge.