But Epic then promptly turned around and appealed. Why should Apple let epic back in when they’re saying they will “play by the rules” in one breath and saying “we don’t accept the courts ruling on the rules” in another?
Appealing a court decision still counts as "playing by the rules." Disagreeing about what the rules should be shouldn't count as a violation of the rules by itself.
Disagreeing about the rules is not a violation of those rules, I agree. But it is a statement of intent that you plan to not follow the rules if you win your court case, which means...you won't be playing by the rules. Seems perfectly reasonable to me that Apple wouldn't want to give Epic access to their user base back while Epic is trying to reverse the decision.
Now, if Epic was not appealing, and Apple refused to let them back in, I would agree that is egregious.
And Epic doesn’t like Apple. These are big companies and Epic is not under an existential treat by not having access to the AppStore.
Epic started this whole mess by breaking their original agreement. And the court explicitly affirmed Apple’s right to terminate Epic’s developer account. If Apple were “abusing” their position, that implies they have monopoly power in that market, which was not what the court determined (rightly or wrongly). Which is the crux of Epic’s real goals, which they lost.
You could argue that it’s not nice or that it’s a poor business choice (because people will still buy some VBucks through IAP), but it’s not abusive. Vindictive maybe, but not abusive.
And really the only people getting hurt are the players who played Fortnite (exclusively?) on their phones or iPads. Which ironically includes me…
I think this would be a much larger issue for smaller developers who are reliant on access to the iOS market. What would happen to a smaller developer that didn’t have more resources? I think that’s a more interesting question.
But right now, this is still a Goliath vs Goliath situation.
