From Epic to the EU, Apple is all about the drama | Opinion

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Looked at from the perspective of the games industry, it’s easy to imagine that this week’s new twists and turns in Apple’s legal saga are all about its endless feud with Epic – a corporate slapfight which is now reaching levels of acidic pettiness that give the most melodramatic Eighties-era TV serials a run for their money. (If you’d like to go into the weekend with the mental image of the Tims, Cook and Sweeney alike, dressed to kill in Dynasty-style shoulderpads and gloriously permed wigs and shooting daggers at one another across a cocktail party; well, you’re welcome. Or, sorry? Or perhaps both.)

On the eve of the European Union’s new rules forcing Apple to open up the iOS software ecosystem coming into force, the company announced that Epic’s developer account was being shut down, as it had proven itself to be untrustworthy in the past and thus allowing it to run a third-party app store would be an unacceptable risk. Oh, the shade of it all! That’s the kind of killer line that lets you end an episode on a lingering shot of Cook’s smirk, confident that the audience will tune in next week to see how Sweeney will get his own back. Seriously though – fetch them their wigs and gowns, because forcing the two billionaires into a Dynasty re-enactment would be both more entertaining and more impactful than the actual tiresome feud we’ve been enduring for the past couple of years.

Both sides have tried to marshal support from consumers for their stances; Epic talks a big game about consumer freedom to choose what software they run and where they get it from, while Apple, somewhat less successfully, makes an argument about consumers having the right to choose a more locked-down and secure platform. Neither side actually gives a monkey’s uncle about consumer freedom, of course; this is a dispute over fees that change hands between the companies, and is purely a question of which company gets to