Escalating to mom is not an adult way to behave.
This is a business fight about power, control and money. Positioning it as some moral crusade is disingenuous at best. I don’t love Apple’s policies, but Epic aren’t asking that Apple gives developers freedom, it’s asking that EPIC gets freedom to also run an App Store and take fees from developers. It’s literally writ large in Sweeney’s E-Mails to Apple in June:
“Please confirm within two weeks if Apple agrees in principle to allow Epic to provide a competing App Store”
When you say "escalating to mom," it isn't clear to me if you're criticizing Epic's lawsuit, in which case I am in agreement with you and criticizing the same thing - or if you're criticizing my suggestion to go on strike, which I think would be the opposite of "escalating to mom." It would instead be gathering your friends in unison against a bully and stating plainly, without appeal to law or to force, that there is no mutual agreement in your interactions and that you want new terms to your relationship.
I also disagree that there is no moral argument to be made here. The point is that it should not matter what Epic's particular motivations are, because they're borne from the same frustrations and feeling of unfairness that all other developers here are in a position to one day find themselves. If Epic is acting strictly selfishly, a win for them is still a win for everyone else. To interpret these events in good faith is to put yourself in their shoes - not to require them to fight for you for it to be just.
As far as I've heard, Epic is not asking to be able to charge developers, they want to sell their own things in their own game at their own prices. There aren't any third parties involved in that so I'm not sure where you got that part from.
It's one thing to say that you think a strike would fail, it's another to say that it shouldn't be attempted. For someone so rigorously defending Apple on ostensibly free-market grounds, you're stopping short of going all the way and accepting a free-market response to their high prices. Your defense is selective, and my interpretation of such selectivity is that you yourself do not have conviction when it comes to how markets should operate or what are just actions inside a free market, but simply an emotional defense of a trillion dollar corporation who makes nice products that you like.
To confirm, I definitely think Epic are running to Mom here with the lawsuit, they were trying to get Apple sucked in deliberately by breaking the contract.
Regarding the moral argument, Tim Sweeney doesn't get to represent all other developers unless he at least checks with a few, and he might be surprised at the range of responses he would get. This is supposed to be a game where everyone knows the rules in advance and sticks to them. There is plenty of evidence to say that Apple has offered sweetheart deals or not applies the rules consistently - and that IS unfair, and I hope Apple gets a smackdown on that. But on the basis that you knew what the rules were in advance, should we continue to accept these events in good faith?
On the subject of money, Apple's prices are off-the-charts crazy right now, and speaking as a veteran of the prices of the early 1990s, I am staggered at how expensive everything is. My current iPhone is almost two years old and it had better last another three at least. I just bought a new MBP in January and the cost was eye-watering. That had better last ten years. And on these things, we have little choice, or at least I don't. I want to be in that ecosystem, because I've tried the others and they suck, so if it's a choice of spending the money or having my life suck, well, that's why money was invented.
I would rather not be seen as defending Apple, because they don't need my help, and I don't want to help them, but I also do not want to read emotive and partial cheap shots at them decrying their "tax" and espousing "freedom" - everything is a trade-off and people make those choices themselves. If Epic had decided to sue Apple, Google, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all at the same time, or done the diplomatic thing and gotten an alliance or coalition to stand up to Apple, that would be defensible, but it seems that the Sweeney Toddler approach won out - how are we supposed to support this even if we agree that Apple deserve a kicking?
I think Epic does actually have a lot of leverage. They have clout. They're a popular, widely respected company and founder. They could easily organize a strike, where large companies frustrated by this exploitative fee all pull their apps and publicly say "move to Android" or something.
Probably the fear of such a strike itself would lead to negotiations. It would just be embarrassing. Apple would not want to be the phone without any of the apps that people want. Who would buy that? And it doesn't matter that Android currently has the same fees, because they just copy Apple and would also change after such a strike wins out.
It's not just the companies though. I've heard others online say "the company doesn't have to sue, there's probably a free market solution," 90% of the people I know shout BAD TAKE! and assume that it must/should be decided in the courts.
The saddest part to me is just the total lack of creativity. There is a way to do it without suing and it would probably even be more impactful, because Apple would know that it is wrong when it loses. Rather than simply feeling that it has to comply with a law, it would know that developers themselves have negotiating power and there is a reasonable point of exploitation that Apple has long since passed.
I wish the Epic guy would consider this.