&gt; choosing a free engine is a cost-saving measure, at which point you&#x27;re no longer making an AAA game by definition<p>Not necessarily. 2 of the most popular game engines, Unreal Engine and Unity3d, have very good free offerings now and many AAA games have been made with them.<p>You can have multi-million dollar development budgets and only be using &quot;free&quot; engines without issue nowadays.