I agree, imo unless something drastic changes, there's little chance Tim Sweeney sells control of epic. But I believe Tencent bought nearly half of it all the way back in 2012 I think? I think they raised money from some PE groups a few years ago, the internet seems to agree that Tencent still has 40%? But, it being a private company, I wouldn't stake too much on the accuracy of that.

Point is I agree it's not for sale, for the reason you describe, but also that one of the leviathans already has nearly the entire minority interest.

> internet seems to agree that Tencent still has 40%?

The internet has no updated information based thr original press release. Since that 40% Sonys purchase would have further diluted tencent. The only thing we know for sure, because he's said so: is Tim has a controlling stake.

We do not know if there is a dual class of shares, but that would be a simple tactic to maintaining comtrol.

I made this point in another comment thread, but I think MS would make a competitor to Unreal/Unity instead. Think of all the game engine talent they now have. The IW engine for CoD, Halo’s slipspace, WoW. They could readily assemble a team to build an engine on par with Unreal.

I could see it happen, but I feel a lot of these home grown engines are just too driven by tribal knowledge to be easily released to the public.

If it's any consolation, so too is Unreal, from my experience. A lot of the times the only documentation on a feature will be random Youtubers, and an official 3 hour stream from 4 years ago. Oh and the source code, of course.

Everything is for sale for the right price. And what is good for Unity does not mean it's good for the consumers.

Well unity is dropping the ball hard for consumers so something different would likely be an improvement