Instant Action bought Torque some time ago, created the Instant Action platform and wanted to let people play games via browser at their platform. It probably did not work as expected so they want to get rid of some costs. Thus they try to sell the Torque engines or will just shut it down.

From my point of view it is quite hard now for Torque3d to survive. But their 2d-tools are great products and could survive.
Another option could be to free it just like the Blender users did. When they spend enough money to a foundation they could eventually buy it, make it open source and create some professional service around it (support, books, tutorials, game projects). But then they have to compete with Ogre, though they at least have some tools and not only a rendering engine.

We will see, what happens.

By the way: 2 other engine makers (Leadwerks and C4) already offer 50% off to Torque licensees.