I believe his point is that since the creator of Apollo was in frequent conversations with Reddit, who apparently told him they weren’t planning big changes to the API anytime soon, that then making it impossible for him to deliver the app by instead charging an exorbitant amount (very shortly after telling him there wouldn’t be changes), then that would qualify as forcing him to break the contract with his users. On the other hand, you could argue that since the promise was “lifetime,” this put to much up in the air (vs. like 5 years or something). On the other other hand, you could argue that there is an implied possibility that the app could shut down, given that Reddit itself could for example close down and make it impossible to deliver, which I think courts would plausibly accept as a sufficient delivery of services. Anyways, to the original point, I’m not sure what a court would find, but hopefully now at least the comparison he’s drawing is clear.
Generally speaking the law doesn't care whether or not you personally think it applies, merely that you've broken it.