If Epic were public, I’d park all of my retirement funds in there. I’ve watched this UE5 development and actively developed in it as a non-gaming dev! They’re thinking 5-10 years ahead.
It would be just a matter of paying Google a license fee to use their environment in a film or games.
"Hey Google, generate a GTA V clone with cel-shading located in Liberia with Final Fantasy 7 characters but not enough to infringe on US copyright laws."
"Sure, here is the link you can share or the downloadable executable to submit to Steam"
"Good, you go ahead and submit that to Steam and let me know when it hits 10,000 downloads"
Unity does have some nice ECS things going, but overall their tech isn't good(prime reason why is that they don't make games, they make engine).
Main branch of CryEngine is dead as engine that anyone aside from CryTek is using, but Amazon invests a lot into their fork(but it lacks vision TBH).
Godot is good for 2d, but they aren't really going for that kind of experience.
From Wikipedia: Tencent acquired a 48.4% outstanding stake, equating to 40% of total Epic, in the company in 2012.