Epic didn't publicly criticize Apple or testify against them in court to get into this situation, they willfully and deliberately broke the legal developer agreement that they signed to get press coverage (they could have filed suit on the anti-steering rules regardless).
Not only did they do this, they then filed suit to say that Apple shouldn't have been allowed to suspend their account—and lost (though arguably won the broader war since anti-steering is currently dead).
There are a ton of things Apple is doing wrong around developer stuff and anti-steering rules and all of it, but I dunno, I feel pretty good about them saying to a specific developer, “actually, you've shown yourself to be willing to ignore the legal agreements you sign, so we're not going to be doing business with you any longer“. Epic's stunt should cost them, if they then want to talk about how they've martyred themselves for developers everywhere. Good work, but a martyr who comes back to life isn't really a martyr, right?
While I don’t claim to know the finer points of the law, I believe the judge was pretty crystal clear that Apple was 100% within their powers to kill the developer account that Epic used to do this.
Not only did they do this, they then filed suit to say that Apple shouldn't have been allowed to suspend their account—and lost (though arguably won the broader war since anti-steering is currently dead).
There are a ton of things Apple is doing wrong around developer stuff and anti-steering rules and all of it, but I dunno, I feel pretty good about them saying to a specific developer, “actually, you've shown yourself to be willing to ignore the legal agreements you sign, so we're not going to be doing business with you any longer“. Epic's stunt should cost them, if they then want to talk about how they've martyred themselves for developers everywhere. Good work, but a martyr who comes back to life isn't really a martyr, right?