What are you trying to say? You can't even get the name of the company right. "unreal" won't give their work away for free. UE is a product, Epic is the company that develops UE.
If Adobe sold their suite as one time purchase many creatives who can just afford a monthly subscription couldn't use it. Does it make it a great business model.
You're calling my argument insane, you're saying my comment is low quality, and imply I'm the one insulting. What is my argument then, in your opinion?
There's many ways that are better than royalties. Just sell the engine as a one time purchasec have a non-profit foundation where sponsors fund development, etc.
It's important to keep development going but commercial projects is not the only way. Godot Foundation exists and there are plenty of others in open-source space.
A nonprofit means actual reports about how money is used, and it's not as if commercial projects are somehow better because they don't fold or get sold or canceled.
And even between commercial ways, charging royalties is one of the worst. It doesn't cost Epic extra if my game starts making more money. Just make the engine a one-time purchase (per version, so you get to keep sales going) and everyone will be much happier. Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up (multiplayer hosting).
Well then exactly what I was saying. This is a business & it's a commercial product, not a freebie. This is why I see many people look at UE but go with Godot. It's nice when you don't have to notify a megacorp about every game you release & then follow up with yearly revenue reports.
By the way you don't only have to file a report for Epic whenever you release a game using UE, you also have to report them your yearly sales and calculate what income is "directly attributable to UE" for that game. For an ordinary small person, for whom you imply lifetime 5% off gross worldwide revenue is a "happy problem", this is way more involved (and prone to legal liability) compared to app stores. You will probably have to hire people well before the million mark to make sure numbers are OK and you don't accidentally owe Epic $$$$$.
I know which model I would choose. Probably the one where I raise prices by 30% and don't have to deal with anything else.