But did epic actually violate any part of their MacOS developer agreement, or just their iOS agreement? I've seen some conflicting information here that makes it seems as though Epic did nothing wrong on the MacOS side.
The Apple-defense being pushed here seems to be that all Apple agreements are one Apple agreement. Ie, if you have an issue with Apple in one are of business, that Apple-as-a-company can retaliate in any other area of business.
It will get interesting if it extends to (although I can't image it would) "Epic violated our App Store rules, therefore we were forced to disable Apple services usage from all of their Apple devices. Unfortunately for security reasons Apple devices are unable to function without those Apple services".
Framing this as an "Apple-defense" seems kind of odd when it's just the legal reality of the situation. There is a single agreement that covers development for all Apple products.
The fact that you might be involved in multiple areas of business is no more relevant here than it would be if you had a food delivery app, a yoga app, and a music app. The same agreement governs all of your conduct with Apple.
Even if it is the "legal reality", Apple wrote that "reality" in a way to use its market position in one vertical to control people's actions in other.
I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with your analogy, but I personally don't think it's reasonable that doing a chargeback on a food delivery app (for any reason) should be grounds for me to lose access to my music or yoga apps.
Google taking action like this (blocking accounts across their entire network of companies) comes up on HN every once in a while, and Google is always "the evil one". Apple is doing the same thing here but it's apparently more acceptable?
> Apple wrote that "reality" in a way to use its market position in one vertical to control people's actions in other.
Again, that is your framing and doesn't take into account that maintaining independent contracts for each individual app would be incredibly impractical. Some developers have hundreds of apps in the app store. Are you really suggesting that if the developer commits a fraudulent act in a single app within a large portfolio of apps, that Apple should only be allowed to take action against that one specific app as opposed to banning the developer entirely?
> I'm not sure the point you're trying to make with your analogy
My point is that this is standard industry practice so framing it as something particularly evil that Apple has done is kind of silly. Look at Google's Play Store agreement, or Steam, or even Epic's own game store. The fact that all these different companies do things the same way indicates there's probably a valid reason for it.
> I personally don't think it's reasonable that doing a chargeback on a food delivery app (for any reason) should be grounds for me to lose access to my music or yoga apps.
As a consumer, no. But we're talking about two businesses here. If you commit fraud in your food delivery app why should Apple (or any company) be required to continue distributing your music or yoga apps? How do they know you won't do the exact same thing in your other apps?
This example isn't just hypothetical, it's a real issue in the Google Play Store. Malicious developers will build up a portfolio of apps, and then once the install base is large enough, begin to sneak malware into future releases of the apps. Google is constantly playing a whack-a-mole game against these developers. Imagine how much harder that game would be if they couldn't ban the developer and had to wait until malware was discovered in each individual app before they could ban that app.
It will get interesting if it extends to (although I can't image it would) "Epic violated our App Store rules, therefore we were forced to disable Apple services usage from all of their Apple devices. Unfortunately for security reasons Apple devices are unable to function without those Apple services".