I wonder if they patch a base installation of some kind (think: a core project selector / launcher) and then individual projects contain a copy of the engine at time of creation?

While it will inevitable be larger in the future, Godot's current executable size is so small something like this could actually work.

At the very least I would want something like Unity Hub which can manage both projects and engine/editor version installations. Being locked into whatever version of Godot Epic Store considers to be "current" sounds like a nightmare.

yea a big selling point to me using godot is downloading the binary of the exact version im building with and stashing it away. i dont want even minor vers to be automatically applied and dont really see the gain here other than exposure

Yup and Godot Flatpak upgraded straight to 4.0.

Simple case of direct download fixed it. Godot doesn’t even need an installer.

No one's going to make anything serious with the auto-updating version from either Steam or Epic, it's just for advertising purposes.

Presuming it’s like Unreal, it merely flags that an update is available and lets you update if you want manually.