Epic Games is suing Google and Samsung for anti-competitive agreements

The maker of Fortnite is filing a lawsuit in the US against Google and Samsung, accusing the two companies of “collusion” to make third-party apps more difficult to download on their platforms.

Epic Games has accused Google of pushing Samsung – which runs Google’s Android operating system on its phones – to make it harder for users to download apps from places that aren’t Google or Samsung’s own app stores.

In its lawsuit, Epic claims that Samsung’s recent move to enable a feature called Auto Blocker – a tool that prevents users from installing third-party apps – by default was “intentionally manipulated” by Google and Samsung to create more friction for users trying to download apps from alternative app stores.

The Fortnite maker argues that Google tried to “preemptively” undermine a previous US court ruling that found the tech giant had created an “illegal monopoly” in app distribution on Android by using its launched its own Google Play highlighting the store and restricting access to other third-party app stores.

In a blog post announcing the lawsuit, Epic Games said: “We are filing a lawsuit against Google and Samsung for coordinated efforts to block competition in app distribution on Samsung devices with Samsung’s Auto-Blocker feature enabled by default.”

“Auto Blocker is the latest in a long line of agreements in which Google and Samsung have agreed not to compete with each other to protect Google’s monopoly power.

“Auto Blocker cements the Google Play Store as the only viable way to bring apps to Samsung devices and prevents all other stores from competing on a level playing field.

“Our litigation alleges that Samsung’s recent implementation of the Auto-Blocker feature was intentionally designed in coordination with Google to pre-emptively undermine the U.S. District Court’s remedies following the jury’s verdict in Epic v. Google.”

“The jury concluded that Google’s app store practices are illegal, including the unlawful agreements it enters into with phone manufacturers such as Samsung.

“The continuation of these coordinated illegal anti-competitive deals harms developers and consumers and undermines both the jury’s verdict and regulatory and legislative progress around the world.”

The game developer has been battling major tech firms for years over anti-competitive behavior in their app stores and only recently returned to Europe on both Android and Apple’s iOS platform after new EU rules forced the companies to tighten their controls over third-party apps to loosen stores allowing Epic to launch its own Epic Games Store on their platforms.

Speaking to reporters about the lawsuit, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the company was concerned that Google wanted to get around possible restrictions on opening up its platform by allowing phone makers and others that rely on the Android operating system to do so encourage but are not subject to the same judgments to carry out the allegedly anti-competitive procedures instead.

“The timing of this is really concerning,” he said.

“Epic had a major antitrust dispute in a jury trial at the end of last year – we won. the jury trial on all points.

“One fear we have always had is that Google would adopt many of its illegal practices and convince carriers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to adopt them instead.

“If the court ultimately issues remedies and an injunction against Google’s practices, we are very concerned that Google would simply try to pass all of these bad practices on to partners who are not covered by this injunction and continue to compete (app) Block services. Stores and to make Android an incredibly difficult platform to compete on.”

Mr Sweeney said that since Samsung enabled the auto-blocker feature by default, it had created a 21-step process that users now had to go through to download the Epic Games Store and access Fortnite.

He also accused the two companies of “misleading” users by labeling the Epic Games Store download file as “unknown” when users tried to install it, arguing that the game developer had a long-standing relationship with both companies and this is not the case from an unknown or unverified source.