Three former Epic Games employees are developing a new AI-powered game engine intended to challenge the near-duopoly held by Unity and Unreal Engine, which together power roughly 70% of games released on Steam in 2025. The founders bring first-hand experience of Unreal’s architecture and the workflows used by major studios, positioning the new venture to target inefficiencies long associated with mainstream game development tools.
The project comes amid growing industry frustration over what has been described as a “doom cycle” in game development—a pattern in which rising production costs, longer development timelines, and heavy reliance on a small number of engine providers squeeze out smaller studios and independent developers. By building artificial intelligence directly into the engine’s core functions, the founders aim to reduce the technical and financial overhead traditionally required to build games, potentially opening the field to a broader range of developers.
While alternatives such as Godot have gained traction among independent developers, and large publishers like Capcom continue to rely on proprietary engines such as RE Engine, the mid-market segment—studios too large for hobbyist tools but unable to justify the cost and complexity of AAA-grade engines—remains largely underserved. The new engine is being positioned to fill that gap, offering AI-assisted development features designed to speed up production without requiring the scale of resources typically associated with Unreal or Unity projects.
Why It Matters for Gulf Gaming Ambitions
The timing of the initiative aligns closely with the rapid expansion of gaming industries across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other GCC states, where governments have been rolling out regulatory frameworks, funding programs, and infrastructure investment to build up domestic game development capacity. As Gulf nations position gaming as a pillar of economic diversification, the availability of more accessible, cost-efficient development tools could prove significant for emerging regional studios.
Independent and mid-sized developers in the region have historically faced high barriers to entry when working with dominant engines, including licensing costs, steep technical learning curves, and dependency on foreign-controlled platforms for core development infrastructure. An AI-powered alternative engine, if successful, could lower these barriers, allowing GCC-based studios to reduce production costs and shorten time-to-market—two factors increasingly critical as competition intensifies across the region’s expanding gaming sector.
Analysts tracking the sector note that reduced reliance on Unity and Unreal could also diversify the broader game engine market, offering studios in the UAE and Saudi Arabia more options as they scale local production capabilities. With both nations actively courting international studios and investing in homegrown talent, new tools that streamline development without requiring extensive AAA-level budgets could support the region’s ambitions to become a more prominent player in global game production.
The founders have not detailed a specific timeline for a public release or named financial backers, but the venture’s emergence reflects broader industry momentum toward AI-assisted development tools. As game studios worldwide grapple with rising costs and consolidation around a handful of engine providers, the entry of experienced Epic Games alumni into the market signals renewed appetite for alternatives—one that regional developers in the Gulf may be positioned to benefit from as the sector continues to mature.
