People seem to act like this is the first App Store dispute.

There have been many over the last decade and Apple's behaviour has been consistent i.e. they will simply allow Epic to come back onto the store and pretend like nothing ever happened. Exactly like we saw recently with the Hey app.

Apple doesn't want to punish developers but they will play hard ball if they don't abide by the rules.

This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

> This appears to be the first dispute where Apple aggressively retaliated in unrelated areas of business.

But it's also the first publish dispute where someone purposely put in code to activate alternative payment options and broke the rules. Apple is setting an example of epic. Don't break the rules.

No it's not https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/21/netflix-itunes-2/

Yes it is, Netflix didn't hide code and then later enable it to support another payment option inside their app. They tried to redirect users to a website when signing up for premium.

What Epic did was hide code and later enable the feature.

Netflix hid code and later enabled it to redirect users to a non-Apple payment method. Epic hid code and later enabled it to redirect users to a non-Apple payment method. They did the exact same thing.

Have you got citation? I cannot find anything on google about Netflix hiding and enabling code. The only thing your link states is once the subscription ends the user is redirected to the browser to pay, so, not the same time.