Unreal 5.2 onward does not support windows 7 despite their initial advertising for UE5 stating it had the same minimum requirements as UE4,
Windows 7 is almost 16 years old at this point... Support for Windows 7 from Microsoft was dropped long ago, heck - they're dropping Windows 10 support soon. (Windows 10 is also 10 years old...). Ageing hardware, dated software packages and of course redundant drivers makes development harder for a lot of developers. The fact UE in general is as versatile as it is (PC, Console, Android/iOS/Tablet etc) is not an easily achievable feat in an of itself.
this does count as performance issue as it force-phased out obsolete yet usable systems.
It phased out nothing. The fact people are too lazy/cheap/tight to upgrade their OS or hardware is not the responsibility of Epic Games to remedy. Epic owes you nothing.
And i'm pretty sure the average age of F95 viewers makes them impervious to tiktok, I for one have never even seen tiktok let alone used it.
You cannot know the average age of users on F95 - so to assume anything otherwise is just nonsensical. Great that you don't use it, though.
However you are right in that what plagues UE is the absence of any attempts at optimization, some may even do the reverse of that and even the built in UE options (which are garbage) do not change anything in their game.
The major issue is the rush to market. Optimisation itself is not the issue, it's the lack of resources and dedication/focus on those areas. General workflows means that development should leave room for optimisation, however, a lot of companies now scrap that phase for "after release" and then try to pull a CDPR, see Cyberpunk.
Release now, fix later is the norm of gaming in general. This is not the fault of Unreal Engine, Epic or any industry leading hardware/software. A hot take I hold is, it's the rushed impatience of consumerism and consumption of media, people are so used to not waiting these days that those insta-dopamine hits at this stage are almost mandatory. Hence why Tiktok is so fucking popular... McDonalds for the brain.