I always thought it was kind of ridiculous to gatekeep console development behind a paywall like this. With godot, there's even another layer to this since godot philosophically opposes integrating any kind of console compiler into their environment bcz of the licensing behind it. Hence this solution, which I'm even less of a fan of than the unreal model.
It sounds like they have to to stay in compliance with the platform's rules, but the benefit of the engine being open source is that anyone else can offer the same porting services.
If you build a game for unreal, you start from scratch or bend the knee to whatever they demand of you.