It seems like this couldn't hold. A lot of companies are developing visualizations or interactive systems to look cool, look high tech as shit, but where the 3d is somewhat bolt on, not the core product.

If these companies just give away their 3d stuff, how was Epic ever going to make money on them? Epic is probably happy doing a couple feature pieces like virtual production in the Mandalorian, but eventually they're going to want to not just give Unreal away to any enterprise who wants to use the tech.

It's boggled my mind wondering what Epic would eventually turn to to convert this Unreal for non-core-product from a give-away into a market. I guess per-seat licensing shouldn't be a surprise; few others have figured out straightforward predictable pricing models to supply software with.