Regulators did get involved: https://twitter.com/ThierryBreton/status/1765793776692326891

And news article https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-regulators-seek-detail...

Includes the tweet as well as confirmation they that the commission did talk to Apple on Thursday

He tweeted something. There was some reporting he might have sent a letter asking questions too, the same as you or I could do.

If any official action was taken it would have to be documented with a case: https://digital-markets-act-cases.ec.europa.eu/search

You’ve clearly never interacted with a regulator before. When a regulator send you a letter with difficult questions, there is an extremely strong implication that a failure to answer those questions correctly will lead to more difficult questions, and, undoubtedly, official investigations.

You don’t want an official investigation, they are a complete nightmare that eat up months of work hours. Much better to spend a couple of days making sure you can give the correct answers on the first pass. Unless of course you genuinely believe the regulators are pushing beyond their remit, but know you’re voluntary signing up for an expensive and protracted fight.

It is incredibly naive to suggest that someone with that power "sending a letter asking questions" would be remotely similar to you or I doing the same.

The EU has an long tradition of "conversations" and "questions" with an unstated "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action".

You're right there is no official casework. That is also entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Apple caved under pressure.

> "give the right answer and you can avoid an unpleasant official action"

You are thinking of the mob. Thankfully here in the US official actions are generally done in view of the public.

No. We're thinking about a government that doesn't rush into potentially irreversible actions without working out a solution for a problem with the parties involved.

Eh? No; the US works broadly the same. For instance, a rather amusing recent one: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/tesla-reportedly-facing-doj-...

The “probe” here would be, at least in the first instance, usually mostly letters asking questions. Note that it is “reportedly”; the media didn’t find this out because the DOJ had a banner on its website saying “we are investigating an alleged glass house”. That comes later, if things are not resolved.

The reason we know EU officials has spoken to Apple is because at least one has said so in public.

_Most_ regulatory enforcement, in practice, is “letters asking questions”. The formal cases you see are generally where the response to the letters was unsatisfactory.

(In some cases this is itself somewhat formalised.)

Yes, the EU immediately stepped in and explained them what the consequences of breaking the law would be, and Apple budged, caved, backed down. Not getting out of this one.

That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could. Rolling back the decision is not going to get them out of the eyes of the regulators and they must have assumed that going into it. Why give the EU even more ammo against you.

My guess is that they saw that all happening but Epic provided them a letter saying they double pinky promised, cross their hearts, will obey by the rules this time, which Apple will later try to use in court later on. Otherwise it doesn’t seem worth the risk prompting clearly foreseeable regulator action.

Or maybe Apple is not infallible, they took a shot because they are very arrogant and thought they could get away with it, and it failed miserably because now there is a law which makes their abusive behaviors illegal?

I think you're probably right, but in fairness to Apple it is reasonable to expect that the future will resemble the past. They've been wildly successful with their abusive behaviors in the past, so it probably was reasonable to think they might get away with it this time. I can't think of any company that gets more of a pass and has people willfully take up their PR releases as gospel truth than Apple.

I sure that Apple world class legal team saw everything you think they saw. But thing is, Apples legal team only provides legal _advise_, they don’t make decisions like this. There’s absolutely nothing preventing a senior leader getting perfectly good legal advice, and choosing to simply ignore it.

After all, legal advice can usually be summed up as “if you do anything, someone can fuck you”, and do nothing isn’t a good business strategy.

> That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could.

Apple banned Epic the day before DMA came into effect when doing this sort of thing was still legal, they 100% saw this. They did probably bet on the chance EU would overlook it if they did it before the law came into effect, they lost that bet but they thought it was worth a try.

No, they banned Epic's account after the DMA took effect.

No they didn't, Apple banned Epics account March 6, DMA took effect March 7.

The DMA has been in force since November 2022 and became applicable in 2023.

There was a grace period for compliance for companies found in violation, because that determination was made after it came into force, not before.

You can't find a company to violate a regulation that's not in force, and it's reasonable to give a company in violation of complex piece of law (that's never been tested) some period to comply.

But that doesn't mean the law is not already in force.

> That only makes sense if we assume Apple’s world class legal team didn’t see what every lay person could

Legal doesn't make decisions like this. That's not what they are paid to do.

Legal advises the executives of the consequences of decisions like this.

And if there's one thing that you should expect from people in positions of incredible power (executives), it's that they often believe that they are immune to the consequences of their decisions.

Most of the time they are right. Sometimes, they are not.

Companies often push their luck with regulators, because sometimes it works, and, as here, the consequences for failure often aren’t significant. For practical purposes Apple’s back where they were a week ago; from their point of view why _not_ chance their arm?

That Addendum has caused considerable consternation among game developers and — to my knowledge — few are prepared to sign it.

The main points of contention are: - the technology fee (the cost of advertising has already cut badly into their margins in the wake of identifier reform); - the clause making the Addendum also binding on any corporate parents and subsidiaries — the game industry is pretty consolidated and this limits the options for independent game studios which are also subsidiaries;

The fee is particularly nasty for hypercasual games, where a very realistic scenario has you paying for millions of installs, only to find your monetization lacking and you paying additional fees to the platform, of all things.

There are very real concerns with the Addendum and making signing only about Epic’s bona fides is reductive and wrong.