Yeah, not arguing the legal specifics. It’s good for Apple to be challenged in court.
But Epic did go out of their way to ‘trash’ Apple in the press. For this and other reasons I can’t generally relate to Epic. (e.g. targeting kids with microtransactions, burning piles of money on Epic Games exclusives.)
Apple is the primary beneficiary by far of games like Fortnite because they allow and tax them in aggregate, even without Fortnite they offer thousands of games for kids to spend a grand or ten in. The legality of the tactics employed by the gaming industry, that can only occur with the platforms complicity, are being challenged in Europe which is hopefully going to end a lot of these practices and derail both Tims grifting off children and cultivated addicts.
So don't put yourself in the position where you have to do business with Epic, like forcing them to use your store to get software on the platform over a billion users use.
Apple could easily just do what various courts have ordered them to do: Open up the ecosystem and allow anyone to distribute apps. This has the added benefit of allowing apple to stop doing business with the entities they don't like, because they are no longer involving themselves in a transaction between the user and the business the user has chosen.
It will also save their executives from a prison sentence if they keep this up.
As for different reason, how about this official policy from ~2015:
> If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150411105225/https://developer...