I think we’re all arguing semantics , and as long as the marketplace is tiny and there isn’t enough tax revenue (because honestly that is a greater deal to politicians than a refund policy although once one is catered to the other probably will be as well) all this discussion is a mute point. In the general case businesses will only care about the bottom line and whatever furthers that goal will be done. When things are small, politicians don’t care, and businesses will follow their local law until certain consequences become clear (like lawsuit, fines, etc.). When things are meaningful in terms of money politicians usually do start to care and see the payday and try and enforce their local policies for customers from their country.
From a letter of the law perspective, I believe at least in current treaties that Jon is correct (but I doubt any of us have poured through the treaty text). From actual actionable items though it is clear that more and more companies are relenting to local law if the market is large enough and they care about it. While Epic is small in terms of number of offices abroad where the penalty for disobedience if they ever got big would be relatively small, don’t underestimate desires for access to the market if the was ever pressed in court. I don’t think Epic would behave any different than Google, Microsoft, etc. if the was ever pressed, but it’s all opinion until it becomes big enough to come to fruition.
Jon might be correct for US, and valeyard for Australia, Bruno for Brazil, etc. these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. Also, local law and international treaties can differ and not all nations ratify everything so it’s always a mess. The idea that foreign publishers agreeing to a US contract is enforceable is the same as foreign customers being able to enforce local laws to a foreign company. The reality is that it’s not that simple and enforcement is hard. I really would really just look to those that have gone through this before like the large companies and extrapolate that those conclusions will be the likely conclusion if local politicians ever decide to push the to the smaller fish.