Lesson learned: If arrogance keeps growing, that does not mean the bigger guy cant do that too.

Update from Forbes magazine.

“Does Apple Or Epic Understand What They’re Doing In This ‘Fortnite’ Fight?”

“Even if Epic anticipated the Fortnite ban … they do not seem to have anticipated Apple coming after Unreal itself. While Epic is willing to sacrifice Fortnite on mobile for this cause, it does not seem like they would want to risk the Unreal engine as a whole, and they have filed an emergency request with a court to try and stop this action by Apple. … Epic has put a whole lot of faith in the courts and the judicial and legislative system to reign in Apple here, while yes, Apple has been the subject of anti-trust scrutiny, this seems like an extremely long fight in the making, which will result in potentially hundreds of millions in lost revenue not just for Epic, but possibly now for Epic’s Unreal-using partners as well, which could harm a ton of their active relationship if Unreal is suddenly rendered unusable on iOS and Mac if it can’t be fixed and updated going forward because of these new restrictions.”

“Apple is demonstrating how absurd their level of power is in the mobile ecosystem, proving Epic’s point beyond what the Fortnite ban itself could ever do. Whether courts or legislators actually recognize this and rebuke them for it is where the gamble comes in, but either Apple is too tone deaf to understand how this new move looks, or they believe themselves to be so omnipotent, they simply don’t care.”

Motley Fool: Apple is Going Thermonuclear on Epic Games.

"The irony here is that going thermonuclear on Epic will create unfathomable fallout for Apple's own developer base. Many of the top iOS games in the App Store utilize Unreal Engine, and forcing those third-party developers, who have no direct involvement in the Fortnite spat, to switch engines is no small thing."

When the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled.

But on however end Epic is right, you don't get access to someone's phone if you don't fulfill the rules of the phone vendor. In other parts of busines, this would be subject to the antitrust act or at least for the free market economy department of any country. I understand that there must be some kind of regulation to not flood the market with spam/maleware (which really works ... NOT!) but on the other hand you aren't even allowed to have some kind of on-demand compilation on Apple devices.

Would be interested to see if this came up in a leading case for all closed hardware-software platform relations and opens the market for more people to be able to develop on Playstation or Switch in the future

If neither Apple nor Epic backs down by August 28, this situation is going to suck for a big part of the game development industry.

The Hollywood Reporter has a story: How an epic battle against Apple will influence streaming's future. Apple already disallows streaming games unless they get their 30% cut. Hollywood is now worried that Apple will extend this to movies. "Today: 'Fortnite.' Tomorrow: 'Mulan.' Hollywood studios face uncomfortable questions about what non-subscription money will be owed to "closed" app platforms."

"It’s a topic that neither Disney nor Apple will comment upon, perhaps reflecting a sensitive area of ongoing negotiation. At least one senior entertainment executive speaking to THR believes it's not worth circumventing Apple or Google to retain 100 percent of the revenue. Disney could drive customers to Disneyplus.com to make a Mulan purchase, but it might create a more confusing purchasing process and hurt marketing too. “Disney would win the battle but might lose the war,” says the executive.”

This is expanding into an even bigger antitrust issue and a huge fight between creators of content and those who control their connection to customers.

I'm scared of the future of mobile platforms and the software deployment associated with them. If our desktop machines were to take the same route, could stuff then become restricted due to a feud between two companies? I have the freedom to put whatever I want on my PC, and play old games etc. But what if all the things were stuff from “the store” that had licenses maintained centrally?

That would be an absolute nightmare. Hurray for root rights, open source and installing from ones own devices/places!