Yes, almost definitely that is what happened here. IANAL but typically you can't sue someone saying, if I did X then they would do Y and Y would hurt me. You have to actually say that they hurt you. Epic wanted to challenge Apple's App Store rules in court, and this is how they decided to do it. Push an update to the app, making it very clear that this update would help consumers with lower prices because American antitrust law focuses on keeping prices low, wait for Apple to take them down, then sue.

They would certainly have been happier with an outcome where apple left their app up and accepted the change. But they knew that was not in the cards because they almost certainly talked with apple about this beforehand. There is no chance that this was not discussed between executives at both companies. 100% there were meetings. 100% at some point epic informed apple that they were going to make the change, and of what would happen if apple banned them. There was no baiting involved.

Yes they brilliantly baited Apple into crushing Epic in court.