I understand both sides and find it interesting that this same conversation happened when “PlayMaker” landed on Unity (programmers weren’t happy about it).
So what actually happened? With the advent of Antares / PlayMaker over there…
Turns out both sides were right and wrong, just the details vary.
Artists developed bad code yes, but small (tiny) studios saved money too, yes.
I am not sure EpicGames would ever do this, from their POV doesn’t seem to make sense since they are filled with C++ programmers and solo indies aren’t exactly the target demographic.
The only thing they need is to free the VM from excessive overhead which is already accomplished…
Converting the VM to readable C++, who actually would need to read them at all at Epic? I have no idea.
So, being as busy as they are lately, implementing something that makes little sense from their POV would be a surprise to me.