Didn't Epic Games violate the app store ToS a while back? I'm not a fan of Apple but it still seems reasonable to me to terminate a developer account for breaking ToS
You can't just use your ToS to circumvent the law of the market you operate in. If they have to allow Epic to operate in the EU under the DMA they can't kick them out unless it's in compliance with EU law. The EU law overpowers Apple's ToS.
It's not reasonable when Apple has set up artificial roadblocks whereby Epic can't compete with Apple in the iOS app store market without a developer account. As of yesterday, Apple is legally mandated to enable competition in that market, so using those roadblocks to aggressively block competition is a pretty big problem.
Apple could easily resolve this by just removing their their bogus constraints around the requirements for launching a competing app store on iOS. After that they could probably keep Epic banned all they want from the main App Store based on future ToS violations. (Though with the caveat that the ToS would need to be reasonable, and it seems clear that Apple has no intent of making a reasonable ToS unless forced).
But they're not going to do that, are they? None of Apple's restrictions were about security or user safety, they were always intended as an exclusionary measures, to make sure nobody can launch a viable competing store. When it looked like Epic was going to do it despite the ridiculous business terms, Apple reached for the next excuse in their toolbox.
Violating some company's ToS is completely irrelevant when it comes to actual laws.
And more importantly, it makes no sense that Epic has to interact with Apple at all in order to sell software to owners of Apple products. Apple has implemented systems which makes this very hard or impossible for non-expert users. Which means Apple violates basic principles of ownership.
This might be fine if Apple allowed creating alternate App Stores and developing apps for that store to be done without a developer account. However, the alternate App Store is a right granted to Epic by an EU regulation, so Apple can't just block them from doing it because they didn't follow the ToS for APPLE's App Store.
Well it seems reasonable to me they terminate their developer account ONLY AND ONLY IF a developer account is not mandatory to be able to have a foot in the iOS market.
Apple has the responsibility to safeguard apps delivered by its own store, but it will be each third party store responsibility to do the same while also complying to EU laws.
My understanding is that they had to break the ToS to take it to court. I mean they could have taken it to court anyway but they wouldn't have had standing.
