Right, like when Rosa Parks went to the front of the bus. It is a commonly used tactic to fight unjust laws by first breaking them.
In Epic’s case, they could have sued without violating the terms. The judge presiding over the case has been very clear on this. Epic already has standing by nature of being an Apple developer.
There are many reasons the two situations are not comparable, but the very basis of your analogy is incorrect.
The update was live for a couple hours, and I am sure a lot of people purchased the cheaper (against the rules) option. They now have an exact number to tell the courts how much they are loosing to Apple, instead of a hypothetical situation where Apple could argue that customers love apple pay and would use apple pay over 3rd party payment systems.
They "could no longer make any money" because of their own actions. Apple did not make them break the contract. I think we will see them lose big in the courts. Public opinion is a different matter of course.
Thus you think their fight has no merits and you pretty much explained why they did this.
If their case has merit, then the contract is null and void, thus no breach happened and they'll get back on the shop and everyone's win.
If they lose the case, then now the public, including law makers, has a better understanding of the impact of this kind of policies, which in the longer term may means some changes will happens around monopoly laws.
Now suppose the vendor decides to start using their own payment system and give Bloomingdale's no share of the revenue. This is of course counter to the signed contract. Bloomingdale's takes the step that is already spelled out in the contract they both agreed to. First, they issue a warning and ask the vendor to stop and return to the terms of the contract. The vendor refuses. Bloomingdale's now takes the next steps specified in the contract and removes the vendor's property from the store and ends their revenue from the store.
So now imagine that the vendor runs to the courts (and the public) and says Bloomingdale's damaged their business by not allowing them to sell in the store at no cost. They would be laughed out of the court room. This is what Epic has done. Using the "damage" caused by their own actions to justify their actions is a losing strategy.
Its actually a bit worse than my example because Epic wants to sell other vendor's goods through their store and make a cut of all of those sales. They basically don't want to follow the rules of Apple's app store so they can create their own app store. The hypocrisy is telling.
If Epic felt they had sound legal basis to question the Apple store rules (and existence) they would simply bring a lawsuit and try to effect change. They also could have simply entered into direct negotiations with Apple and made their case. They could lobby other vendors to join them. They could continue to follow the rules until the court's decide and no users would be impacted and their revenue would continue the entire time. They made other choices and so they have hurt their own business.
Personally, I think the app store royalties and policies need to be updated and made more appropriate to the scale of the business and the community. However, I also disagree with Epic's approach to the issue. You don't have to be an Apple acolyte to consider Epic's choices to be inappropriate.
In that respect, it is very similar factually, even if you find it repugnant to equate the two in any way.
Epic appears to be valued at 17-ish billion. Apple is the largest company on earth.
Comparing their sizes, that's something like the People's Republic of China fighting with New Zealand.
I've seen this strange attempt of comparing Epic to Apple before though, as if a single individual games company actually has the same resources as the company controlling a significant part of the global computing infrastructure
But a $17B company has all the resources it needs to fight a lawsuit, bully, buy press, etc.
The lawsuit is a drop in the bucket compared the sustained economic damage that Apple causes by simply turning the light switch off. And this is where the size matters, because Apple can easily sever every individual developer, while the reverse is not true.
As for the lights being turned off - Epic did that to themselves. Even after filing the lawsuit they were given the option to remain in the store, by both Apple, and the court, as long as the returned to compliance with the rule. They would have been able to continue their lawsuit while still shipping through the App Store.
Epic is completely responsible for the damage to their own business and to their customers. They were given the option to continue both the lawsuit, and to sell through the App Store, which they declined.
As for being cut off from customers. It’s worth considering that Epic is part owned by TenCent, and must remain on good terms with them if they want to retain access to the Chinese market.
The totality of the Chinese market is larger than the iOS segment of the US market. There is no reason to suppose that this move is not driven by the desire of the CCP to reduce Apple’s power.
That would be a good explanation for why they are continuing to harm their iOS customers when they don’t otherwise have to. Perhaps they chose to take that hit because it’s less than the hit they would take if they were forced to exit China.