The Rise of BRUTAL: An Open-Source Game Development Framework

Dean Hall, the creator of the survival multiplayer online game DayZ, has introduced BRUTAL, an open-source game development framework that is available for free use, including for commercial games, as long as developers credit the framework. The project has been in development for about four years, and Hall emphasizes that BRUTAL is a framework rather than a game engine, meaning developers can either create games directly with it or use it as a foundation to build their own engines. At its core, BRUTAL features a custom interoperability layer that allows C# to access native APIs and libraries, along with multiple supporting libraries for mathematics, memory management, string handling, job scheduling, logging, localization, and more. The framework runs on both Windows and Linux and is built on the latest versions of C# and Vulkan. Hall views the launch of BRUTAL as a response to the growing dependence of developers on a few large engine makers, arguing that Unity and Unreal have not been held accountable enough to developers. He expresses concern that as the competitive advantages of established software companies erode, these companies may seek to extract more revenue from developers who feel trapped in their ecosystems. BRUTAL aims to change this dynamic by providing developers with more options and the ability to fork the framework if necessary.