Maybe be a little bit more specific what you need.
You bash on what you call "freemium" engines. But on the other hand you say you only need 2D, and that you are a beginner.
I understand that you try to avoid the splash screen. What kind of limitations are you trying to avoid?
Free versions of Unreal and Unity can be used for commercial development as long as you either make less than some sume (10k$ for Unity, 50$k for Unreal), pay for Pro with Unity (1500$, really a problem after you just got over 10k$ from selling your game?) or pay royalities with Unreal (25% with the free UDK, sucks, granted, but only 5% with the lowcost (20$) Unreal 4.... not so much of a problem after you made ove r50k$ with your game).
If you have only modest expectations, there are plenty of free or even open source alternatives. Some of them are even quite good and can rival Unity, Unreal and other commercial engines in power. Don't know about the ease of use though, the quality of the editor tools of some of these engines might be questionable.
- Source Engine. If you are a hardcore gamer, you have heard of it. Its free and open source. Don't know about limitations though
- JMonkey if you want to develop in Java
- Panda3D free at least
- Esenthel Engine also has a free version, doesn't do 2D though, don't know about commercial releasing
If you need more Engines to research, head over to http://devmaster.net and have a look at their Engine db.
