That's why making Acknex open source would be a possible new approach for Conitec. I don't have any numbers, but from a gut feeling, the current business model does not work very well anymore. Might be, that 3DGS is just a Cash Cow anymore, especially leveraging the cheaper versions for getting new, inexperienced users, putting not much budget into further development and market 3DGS as a simple tool for creating your own games.
This approach would make sense to me, but it takes the edge for professional use, because if you are experienced enough to build a publishable product, you can do this with basically any engine out there, and then there are better options.
I am advocating to make it open source because professional users then have
1) a basis to build upon and don't have to build an engine from scratch or buy an expensive one and
2) the possibility to specialize the engine according to their needs (and professionals should have the abilities to do so) and build in missing features and even publish this engine additions to the community and finally
3) have an engine basically for free and might only have to pay royalties.
Conitec then still has the possibility to market it as retail product to new users, but can hold the professional users as they then can have a top-notch engine and change it according to their needs. And Conitec could have additional cash flowing in from royalties from professional projects. It would shorten development cycles allowing us to have more and cutting-edge features faster.
I am not in the game engine business, but from my professional and academic point of view, this would highly make sense. Of course I cannot proof this with any numbers as I don't have any information from Conitec.