The situation with Roon Essentials and Elac has nothing to do with Harman and Samsung and has been like this forever. E.g., here’s a post by RoonLabs from 2022:
It’s unfortunate and my personal guess is that if RoonLabs could go back in time, Roon Essentials would not exist.
Note that using Essentials as an endpoint in a Roon system seems to be supported by Roon, but using it as a Roon Essentials server is in the responsibility of Elac.
Also note that the link in the above post for Elac support might not reliably get you through to Elac support and this more recent one might be the better way: