Well, check the timestamp on your article. It was free, for the last 8 years, up until this afternoon apparently. I hadn't heard about this yet, because.... it apparently just happened 5 minutes ago. It shouldn't really affect anyone who isn't working for a corporation though. Nothing has changed in terms of how they distribute it, it's still all free for anyone, it's just that they are expecting large companies to pay for use in commercial products, same as always. With the previous deal, Epic didn't start taking it's 5% cut until a game made over a million dollars. Problem was, the mandelorian started using it for free, at 20 million an episode, and because it wasn't a game, they didn't have to pay their 5%. After being shortchanged literally 1 million dollars a week for 3 years, and having to fire 900 people last week because they began loosing money from being overly generous, and as usual, having their richest clients pay 0 tax while the poorest paid 5%. So they made this change, and I think it's reasonable. Epic isn't planning to stick individual end users with up front costs if that's what you're thinking this means. When they talk about "seats" that is a standard pricing model that companies like Disney or Pixar pay when they hire 175 people to work on a project. You're not in a position to need such a license unless you already have more than enough to pay for it. In short, they are just now taxing the rich to make millions off of their product for the first time in almost a decade, because they had to fire nearly a 1000 programmers and artists to make up for the money that Disney wasn't having to pay them for using UE5 in 200 million dollar projects.
edited my original post