I was with you until you mentioned Epic. What Epic did was a violation of a contract in a way it knew would bring about a confrontation. The judge hearing the case agreed that it was purely self-inflicted pain by Epic.
To be clear, many App Store rules seem arbitrary and ill defined (and enforced), but Epic is not the one to support here for what it did.
I agree that Epic is not innocent here. But what I worried about was Apple's reaction to them. Kicking Epic out is OK, but when they decided to use Epic's Unreal Engine customers as leverage by threatening to prevent future security updates of the engine, that was a clear sign that the current Apple management does not value the indie studios that build the apps.
To be clear, many App Store rules seem arbitrary and ill defined (and enforced), but Epic is not the one to support here for what it did.