It all feels somewhat risy. Woring like that implies the devs can leave the project once they completed a development cycle and we’d be left with code we wouldn’t now the ins and outs, to pass on to another mercenary programmer. And at the same time, we have to pay the artists, so if the software dev schedule doesn’t match the art’s, if the freelance developers just disappear, give up, finds another job, and that’s something I’ve seen happening, I fear it would derail the whole thing.
Also, I see no reasons why we wouldn’t be able to hire a lead developer with some experience with the Unreal engine on their resume, assuming we’d give that person a salary matching their skills.