Maybe it's good news? To me it sounds as illegal as a car manufacturer requiring you to use Shell vpower in order for you to not void the warranty, and doing so after you bought the car.
Maybe the EU could then deal with this and ask the important question: Are they even allowed to link the functionality of IoT devices to an online account?
My reason for buying all Phillips was that their system was relatively open, that the gateway could be accessed and controlled via HTTP and put behind a firewall without access to and from the internet. And the ability to use 3rd party apps.
I've moved over to using Zigbee2MQTT together with a Zigbee USB 3.0 Dongle and all controlled from a custom Python based server on a Raspberry Pi, which made me lose all the access via the apps (I'm not into Home Assistant), but it's now all automated and controllable via dimmers and other events so that in my case the Phillips gateway has become obsolete.
But it was a great entry into the ecosystem, just because it was simply usable via HTTP, which allowed the best of both worlds: the apps and the ability to tinker with it all. The only thing which was missing was the real-time access to events.
Sad to see that they are turning their back on us, but let's hope that the EU notices and creates some new laws, even if it's in 10 years.
Fully local solution with no 3rd party clouds, EULAs, proprietary hubs or propruetary apps or restrictions. Compatible with almost any zigbee device. A subset of tested and well-known devices is listed at their website https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/.
Recommending to everyone. It can be set up as 3 docker containers (zigbee2mqtt, mosquitto, home assistant), for example in docker compose. Or there are also ready-made images of Home Assistant with Supervisor GUI management for people not wanting to fiddle with that manually.
Node-Red is another great addon to the setup if you want to configure automations graphically by joining nodes together. Far more powerful than any proprietary solutions.