Having an app key issued counts as permission in my book. Subscription refunds should be limited to the period during which service was not provided.
And good luck negotiating anything with a billion dollar company, they'll be happy to stiff you if they want to but in the meantime you are beholden to the terms of the contract. This because they typically have legal staff and you probably don't so there is a huge asymmetry in any kind of legal tussle with them.
That’s a very good point. Why not negotiate a deal over the past 15 years, why leave their customers and company hanging on a key invalidation.
Because that's how Twitter set it up. As a developer you play by their rules, and you can just about forget negotiating an exclusive deal that would reduce the company's rights and increase yours without paying for it.
There's a difference between canceling your subscription and getting a refund. A small company the size of the Iconfactory might not have the cash on hand to even issue full to everyone who might ask for it. If my annual subscription just renewed in December, they might have already spent that money on salaries, rent, health insurance, etc. Since Twitterific has been removed from the App Store there wont be any subscription renewals, but if they have to (over the next week) issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in refunds, it really could end the company.
given this, it was certainly within their control to attempt to negotiate a contract with their only supplier and then they would have contractual guarantees about not being summarily cut off
(would musk have cut them off? probably, but then they could go after him)
without that the business model was always based on chance
they knew this, and continued to sell the product regardless