A bomb exploded the day before yesterday when Epic Games has announced that Apple has decided to cancel its developer account in a surprising and unilateral manner. This move happened right on the brink of the arrival of iOS 17.4, with the expected adaptation of the iPhone ecosystem to the European Union’s law on digital markets, so this move by those from Cupertino turned out to be particularly sharp.

All of this is even more surprising when we consider the aforementioned developer account, element necessary to bring your apps and your long-awaited app store to iOS, was approved by Apple a few weeks ago. As we told you the day before yesterday, there have been several conversations between executives from both companies during this time, including Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. And the truth is that when checking this communication, those from Cupertino did not show much confidence in those from Fortnite, despite the fact that Sweeney himself promised to comply with the conditions imposed by Apple.

The corpus of reasons given by Apple for blocking the Epic Games developer account was mainly based on two points: criticism from the CEO of Epic Games against Apple due to restrictions placed on “entry” to iOS and Epic’s failure to meet similar commitments made in the past. In other words, they didn’t trust them. Of course, we cannot separate the already long legal confrontation between the two technology companies from this situation.

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Cupertino’s concerns are understandable given its relationship with Epic, but taking such a precaution “just in case” is clearly overkill. So as we can read on MacRumors, Apple relented and returned its developer account to Epic Games. As we read in the statements from the people of Cupertino to the mentioned medium, this decision was made after conversations in which Epic Games pledged to follow all the rules.

The striking thing about this situation is that in fact, and as already seen from the documentation released by Epic Games, This obligation existed before, which undoubtedly prompts us to think that in fact Apple backed down after seeing the huge impact this arbitrary decision caused. A noise that has already affected his image, but which could also reach (and certainly has) the European Commission, which would most likely start acting on this matter.

For obvious and understandable reasons, the adaptation of the iPhone ecosystem to the framework defined by DMA is something that Apple did not like, and the technology company obviously has every right in the world to voice its disagreements and explore options to minimize the impact. that the new standard may have in its principles. However, in the space of a few weeks, we experienced two important braking passes where the Cupertino had to turn back. First it was with the removal of PWA support, a measure that put the European Commission on alert and which Apple had to back down from, the day before the release of iOS 17.4 and now with Epic Games. Two mistakes that should make Apple rethink its stance on DMA.