Not necessarily. The small fee they collected before they made it free would hardly pay one developers salary I bet. And the high prices for AAA companies they charged before that may or may not, but then we wouldn’t have the engine. I rather have something not so perfect available for a decent price than something that works perfect which I can’t afford.
Let’s face it: UE may be buggy for some people depending on what they do, but it is still the best thing around. I tried out several other engines before and they cost me years of my life, because they were, quite frankly shlt. Unreal has allowed me to get something going within a year that is way more advanced than the previous versions I made with Ogre and the C4 engine in 6 years. Of course there is lots to improve here and I think we should continue to pester Epic to set aside some people to work on bugs alone and to improve the documentation, but I don’t think paying a few bucks from some little guys like us is the answer. They have probably dozens of people employed with millions of dollars budget. A few bucks from us won’t matter to them.