WP Engine Compatibility Questions

I ran across this plugin on this page:
https://wpengine.com/support/webp-image-optimization/

Seemed interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I asked a WP Engine support person to push the needed modifications to Nginx. It seemed not to break staging, so I pushed it live.

Some things worked. Other bits seemed flaky. I was seeing lots of missing images. I decided to bulk process all the images, and as this process moved along the images seemed to start to work. When it was done, I tested the site thoroughly and even uploaded new assets. They also seemed to be processed into webP images and serve without issue.

Then when I thought it was all good, I copied all this down to staging. I felt a little silly that the site was not functioning properly through much of the day as I’d essentially tested this feature on the live site, but so be it. I had the support people make sure the Nginx rules would not apply to staging, and I copied it down.

Weirdly, staging images seem a bit flaky now. Not sure what to make of it. Lots of 429s again, according to the support team, but I have no clue why that should be true on production and not on staging.

What’s the right way to read all this? Should I be worried? And how should I test further?

Any guidance would be much appreciated, thank you.