Who would’ve thought? This isn’t going to fly with the EU.
Article 5.3 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA): “The gatekeeper shall not prevent business users from offering the same products or services to end users through third-party online intermediation services or through their own direct online sales channel at prices or conditions that are different from those offered through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper.”
Friendly reminder that you can sideload apps without jailbreaking or paying for a dev account using TrollStore, which utilises core trust bugs to bypass/spoof some app validation keys, on a iPhone XR or newer on iOS 14.0 up to 16.6.1. (ANY version for iPhone X and older)
Install guide: Trollstore
If the EU didn’t want to allow this then they should have written the law differently, but poorly-written regulations are their specialty. Apple’s plan complies with the letter of the law. Developers are free to use a direct sales channel and can offer any price they want, along with various conditions that aren’t an option in the App Store. They just have to pay a commission for access to the lucrative market Apple built. The specific percentage of the commission is such that it’s not actually a desirable option for developers, but the law didn’t say that Apple had to make it desirable to avoid the App Store’s existing sales system.