Arizona House Bill 2005, a hotly contested piece of legislation that would have imposed developer-friendly changes to Apple and Google’s mobile app stores, is now on death’s door. The bill, which would have allowed alternative payment systems on Android and iOS that bypass the stores’ 30 percent cuts, mysteriously disappeared last week prior to a scheduled vote that could have sent it straight to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

The bill had just won a landmark victory in the Arizona House of Representatives earlier this month, and the state Senate was officially set to begin its vote at 3PM local time. HB2005 was the first bill on the agenda, yet it never came up. Now, it turns out that the Senate decided to pull the bill at the last minute, and its sponsor tells The Verge that its fate is effectively sealed for the rest of the year. Arizona will wrap up its congressional session next month with no plans to hear HB2005 again.

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The seeming death of HB2005 and the confusion and mystery surrounding it underscore both the immense power of tech titans like Apple and Google and also the rough legislative road ahead for similar bills in Illinois, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and other states around the country. The clear takeaway is that although these bills are the result of successful lobbying efforts from the CAF and its partners, the Silicon Valley lobbying that has arisen to counter these bills has proven just as savvy.

“There’s a legitimate issue here. It’s undeniable [Apple and Google] have gatekeeper power and hold sway over the app stores, and there’s just nowhere else to go. You have to go through one of these companies to get your app before consumers,” says Pat Garofalo, the director of state and local policy at the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project, which has voiced support for the bills. “It makes perfect sense there are lots of forces — whether they be small, medium, or large — arrayed on both sides of this.”