Exactly. Epic have their own store for games. Would they be fine with each AAA game releasing on the store for “free” but required a credit card to be entered once it was run, with 100% of the money going to the publisher?
Yes, the Epic store enables this exact scenario. Lots of free games on Epic make all of their month through micro transactions billed entirely through their own systems. See Rocket League for one example, but there are many.