Well that's the part that sorta confuses me. There were a lot of high-quality emulators that were native to iOS, and sideloading them was the only way to use it

Well that's the part that sorta confuses me. There were a lot of high-quality emulators that were native to iOS, and sideloading them was the only way to use it. There was also the same bog-standard port of Retroarch et. al., but developers really did put effort into making high quality, even Open Source, iOS-native emulation software. The sinister side of me wants to say that stopping emulation forces more users down the IAP/microtransaction feedback loop in order to entertain themselves. The rational side of me wants to say that Yoshi's Cookie isn't the Fortnite killer, but the whole thing feels icky to me nevertheless.