What Should I learn Next (an basic write-up)(networking)

I have spent about a decade using GameMaker,[13-23] I have made several actual games that I have posted to Steam, or sold directly to a buyer looking for a game to Publish (usually on Steam). They aren't half bad, and I can do more, but my goal has been to do something in the online space. I have several ideas, but ideas do not mean much when you cannot actually complete them in anything but singleplayer.

So what I am wanting to know is should I stick with GameMaker, or should I move to something else?
Most people tend to say "just stick with what you know! you should go deeper not wider." but I find this hard to accomplish when the community I am in has very few people actually doing what I intend to do, so there is nobody to learn from.

You could probably skip the rest of this, it is only context
It is possible to make an online game within the engine, but every single person who has ever made a series, or a blog post, etc. has given up entirely on the engine itself over the last few years (or even games as a whole). Learning the higher-end stuff is unfortunately gate kept in that community specifically and because I only know that engine and it's language (gml, not drag and drop) I have no idea what I am looking for elsewhere.
for those who think it is not true, how contactable are you? I've talked to a lot of people over the last 10 years and it's usually the same thing :

"I'm busy with my own project look at x"
...x is outdated...

"sorry I am busy with my project I will never finish look at y"
...y gave up..

"sorry, I have no idea how to work with people" or worse
"sorry I would love to do this project with you, it sounds amazing lets do it"
....gives up after the 2 week period of excitement due to having either never finished a project/game, or not understanding delayed gratification....,

last one "Man, I'd love to teach you, but I just don't know how. I couldn't answer anything".

There are probably 2 people out there that I know who know exactly what they are doing, but because of that they have gotten a job doing the projects you actually hear about and ignoring networking. Think Undertale scale games. I am not mad at these people at all, it's awesome for them, I am simply upset that people aren't putting their knowledge back into the community.

GameMaker is probably the best total package out there. It knows how to handle sprites, it is object oriented and easy to have reference to children/parent/other objects. The in-built editor is the best thing since the move from mac. It's wild to me that places like Unity and Unreal have been touted as being awesome when they still rely on visual studio so heavily (the slowest program to open ever) for their text editor.

Looking at things like Java, or Python, having a simple editor isn't bad to me. Importing a library doesn't sound impossible to me. There are more people, and even a.i. who can program in everything but gml. (most a.i. models have literally no idea how to even comprehend GameMaker).

Something like Godot seems terrible, and the actual community around it seems generally toxic. I have tried to join in a few times but from what I can tell everyone just joined it are pre-hype and then gave it up, never made a single thing in it but are touted as community leaders, joined during the unity exodus and then left/joined and never left but still have no idea how to do much, or they are the worst part of the community and decide that a game engine should revolve around politics.

Part of me thinks I should just learn the Quake engine. That game is great, and has inspired every great game that is out even now. Call of Duty stills uses Quake physics as far as I am aware (insane right?)

Ignoring all of my nonsense, and getting back to the base question of "should I stay or should I go":
The things that matter to me are data saving/loading as I need people to join and leave while keeping the data on a server., ease of use, and public knowledge.

My other thought was this: Should I just take my knowledge of actually getting games done, my design knowledge, and hire some people? All of my games get at least 50k users day one, it seems crazy... but maybe?
And if you are curious, I have had a few teams of people working on games before. I have experience managing people both in games, and in the real world (vastly different fields), getting a GDD ready, and modifying as we go.

My experience hiring people within the GameMaker community has been less than successfully, specifically with the Online experienced gentlemen out there. They tend to not actually get what the goal is almost every time, but that's usually a language barrier. I have found that 1 person out of like 15 end up caring about that part and being able to bypass it. (the one now has a great job in Europe from Venezuela and I am happy I could get him there)