Given Epic's recent success via free-to-play software, I think there's room for optimism. Free or inexpensive software is a huge draw to the talent pool needed to make such software valuable long-term, and from what I've seen of Epic's business strategy I think they would appreciate that.

True, I don't have a negative opinion of Epic and I think it is a good and sensible investment for them. Still sad to see smaller companies getting bought when I thought they would be quite successful.

Even if they did, art assets (meshes, textures, and often animations) generally are very easily transferable. I don't think the Unreal Engine marketplace licensing says anything about not being able to use commercially with a different engine. Could be wrong, but when I checked a few years ago that was my impression