BIG Sur - Not a good upgrade

Whatever happened to due diligence and checking printers and scanners for current vendor driver support — before the operating system upgrade? Does your particular Epson printer appear in Apple's built-in AirPrint support, which would eliminate dependency on Epson software and drivers?

Yes, but why would you assume that the printer manufacturer will automatically support a newer operating system? Granted each is provided an opportunity, by Apple, to do so, but not all do. Assuming that everything will "just work" is not a very sound approach.

Both Catalina and Big Sur do not support 32-bit printer drivers, and if you upgraded from Mojave or earlier where those 32-bit drivers worked just fine — they would be useless without explicit Big Sur driver support from Epson. If you visit the Epson site for your particular printer, choose macOS 11.0, and see no drivers, or drivers with a date prior to Nov 2020, then they are likely not Big Sur compatible drivers.

Did you check to see if your Epson device was listed in the built-in Apple AirPrint support? If so, you would still need a networked (wired/wireless) device, and Reset the printing system to re-add the Epson device with AirPrint, not Epson drivers.

Whether it worked fine on a previous OS is irrelevant. If one is upgrading the OS on they computer (Mac or Windows), there's always a procedure to do and that is to make certain that any equipment one is using, particularly "old" equipment like printers are still compatible.

In a perfect world, a manufacturer will always keep the drivers for their equipment current. However, there comes a time when the cost/benefit of doing so becomes too expensive and it's understandable. Why would a company spend money on keeping an old piece of hardware that is no longer sold?

Your car analogy fails here. You're not constantly "upgrading" your engine every year, and if you did and you mess it up it's your responsibility, not the car manufacturer.

Ok, that would be your decision to make of course, but are you posting for assistance with using your printer with macOS Big Sur or just to make a statement?

or you could look at it that epson are not supporting you when you

arbitrarily decide to upgrade to a fancy new os without fore thought,

in your first post you say you printer is not supported

so what are you making.