> "Apple is retaliating against Epic for speaking out against Apple’s unfair and illegal practices, just as they’ve done to other developers time and time again," Epic said in its statement today.
The retaliation is shady, but is the retaliation illegal? Even if a whistleblower would show an Apple internal conversation that looks like "Let's retaliate against Epic", the fine print everyone probably has some "we can terminate the account for any reason" clause, which would include retaliation as well?
The DMA requires that companies like Apple provide fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access for competition.
The account is really neither here nor there, it's only an issue because Apple has chosen to make it a requirement to distribute an app marketplace. It's pretty clear that they can't legally freeze out Epic as a competitor, but how they solve that is up to them.
The retaliation is shady, but is the retaliation illegal? Even if a whistleblower would show an Apple internal conversation that looks like "Let's retaliate against Epic", the fine print everyone probably has some "we can terminate the account for any reason" clause, which would include retaliation as well?