From the article it seems that there's confusion around that at ASUS. Support staff are saying unlocking the bootloader isn't and won't be possible, but at the end of the article you also have this:
A Reddit user claims that the company’s developer liaison on its Telegram channel has no knowledge of any such development. “According to them, the unlock tool server is in maintenance and will resume in Q3,” the person writes.
Yeah, hopefully this is just a whole misunderstanding, as there's not much reason for them to stop allowing bootloader unlocks for the people that want them.
I got an Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 in 2020 and it already gave up last year by becoming very slow and randomly rebooting from time to time. Updates also seem to have stopped but the phone was released in 2018 so the obsolescence doesn't surprise me, but what's infuriating is that right now it's pretty much garbage. I'm now using it only for work 2FA as the process to add my new Pixel phone to my employer's 2FA is pretty bureaucratic and takes a whole month (and during that month you have to give up working from home since they have to disable 2FA on your old phone).
I've loved their ROG Phones. I had their ROG 2, and now their ROG 6. Complete overkill for most people, but I'm definitely an Android "Power User".
Their Zenfones have also gotten a good reputation as decent mid-range devices that kick some recent trends, like keeping the phones on the smaller side and keeping the headphone jack.
Again, for a company as big as Asus/Pegatron, major decisions like this travel slowly and chaotically down the pipeline. We'll have to wait for the Zenfone 10 release to say for sure.
I was hoping they would anounce one day that they up their support window bc two years of updates is kind of ridiculous for a 800€ phone. This is of course another way to boost their sales smh.