@swingerofbirch @daringfireball IMO Apple was willing to make Nintendo et al. a little upset because allowing emulators is a power move against the market power of third-party stores like AltStore (and more broadly, against the public perception of EU regulation).

Emulators were probably the single largest category of app that users actually wanted to use that weren't allowed under Apple's previous guidelines (besides porn maybe). The status quo has now shifted from "no way to get emulators without being in EU and installing a 3rd party store that can then market other stuff to you" to "US users can download Delta (the most popular emulator iOS app) for free but EU users have to pay for it in order to cover the author's Core Technology Fee costs". Regardless of the fact that the CTF is arbitrarily imposed by Apple, to end users it looks like "in the heavily-regulated EU market you have to pay for emulators that can be had for free under free market US innovation" which is clearly Apple's preferred narrative.