This is almost certainly due to their developer account being blocked, so it's not like Epic is fully innocent here.
But what they are doing is brilliant, because they have just demonstrated that their perceived infringement of the iOS rules has caused them to also lose Mac developer access, presumably due to it being the same account. But legally, the iOS and the Mac developer agreements are separate contracts. So from a legal standpoint, Apple has reacted to a perceived infringement in one contract by retaliating in a legally unrelated contract. That might be illegal.
And in addition, Epic is basically using Apple to send a very strong signal to game developers: Everyone serious about gaming is on Windows anyway.
I'm curious to see how this will mix with Apple silicon, which will effectively make running a stock Windows impossible. So in the future, you'll need to choose when buying your hardware if you want phone-quality games on Mac or triple A on PC.
I predict that the market segment of casual players using Apple hardware but Windows Bootcamp will now be driven away from Apple. In my opinion, the only way to avoid that would have been for Apple to demonstrate excellent UE5 performance on Apple silicon, but that now surely won't happen.
But what they are doing is brilliant, because they have just demonstrated that their perceived infringement of the iOS rules has caused them to also lose Mac developer access, presumably due to it being the same account. But legally, the iOS and the Mac developer agreements are separate contracts. So from a legal standpoint, Apple has reacted to a perceived infringement in one contract by retaliating in a legally unrelated contract. That might be illegal.
And in addition, Epic is basically using Apple to send a very strong signal to game developers: Everyone serious about gaming is on Windows anyway.
I'm curious to see how this will mix with Apple silicon, which will effectively make running a stock Windows impossible. So in the future, you'll need to choose when buying your hardware if you want phone-quality games on Mac or triple A on PC.
I predict that the market segment of casual players using Apple hardware but Windows Bootcamp will now be driven away from Apple. In my opinion, the only way to avoid that would have been for Apple to demonstrate excellent UE5 performance on Apple silicon, but that now surely won't happen.