Managed WordPress Hosting Platform WPEngine to Deprecate Support for .htaccess
https://wpengine.co.ukWith the upgrade to PHP 7.4, WP Engine has decided to deprecate the .htaccess file. With PHP 7.4 and any subsequent versions, WP Engine will no longer support .htaccess.
Looks like you can choose not to update to PHP 7.4 if you want (at least for now) but they can depreciate older version in the future.