Epic is suing Google again and now Samsung too

Four years after Epic sued Google over an illegal app store monopoly – a case the company won last December – Epic is suing again. The Fortnite The game developer has filed a lawsuit second Antitrust lawsuit against Google and now Samsung alleging illegal conspiracy to undermine third-party app stores.

The lawsuit centers on Samsung’s “Auto Blocker” feature, which is now enabled by default on new Samsung phones. While enabled, it automatically prevents users from installing apps unless they come from “authorized sources” – namely the Google and Samsung app stores. Epic claims that there is no process for “authorizing” a competing business.

When Epic filed its original lawsuits against Google and Apple in August 2020, the company did not yet have its own mobile app store. Now the time has come: On August 16, the Epic Games Store launched on Android worldwide and on iPhones in the European Union, where EU digital markets law forced Apple to allow alternative stores.

But a month before the company could open its own store, Epic claims, Samsung suddenly decided to enable auto-blocker more or less by default – making it harder for new phone buyers to install competing apps themselves.

Epic claims that it now requires “an exceptionally involved 21-step process” to download a third-party app store on a Samsung phone, increasing the likelihood that users will give up somewhere.

While “21 steps” seems like an exaggeration to me (Epic’s own website claims that disabling the auto-blocker only takes four steps!), I can see the company’s point of view when I try it out on my own Samsung phone. Not only is the automatic blocker preventing me from installing the new Epic Games Store, the “Can’t install app” pop-up no longer tells me how to disable the automatic blocker.

When I search for “turn off autoblocker” in the universal search bar on my Samsung phone, no relevant search results appear. When I search for “auto-blocker” I have to tap through several additional screens to turn it off. One of them asks me if I’m really sure and claims, “Auto Blocker protects your phone by blocking threats and other suspicious activity.”

Today, Epic claims that the promise of security is completely false: “Auto Blocker does not assess the security of a specific source or a specific app before blocking an installation,” the legal complaint says.

“This thing is not intended to protect against malware, which would be a perfectly legitimate purpose,” says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. “The thing is supposed to prevent competition.”

However, in a roundtable interview with journalists, Sweeney admits that he has no evidence yet that Google and Samsung worked together – he hopes that this will come to light in the legal disclosure process, as has happened with so many embarrassing things Epic vs Google. He also admits that he didn’t actually ask Samsung if the company would voluntarily make the Epic Games Store an “authorized source.”

As with Sweeney’s previous lawsuits, he claims this is because he is fighting on behalf of all app developers, not just Epic.

“If we had fought Epic vs Apple And Epic vs Google Based on Epic’s special privileges alone, settlement discussions with Apple and Google might have been fruitful,” Sweeney says. “But if we did that, we would sell all the developers.”

Instead, he says, he privately asked Samsung to either change the automatic blocker to be disabled by default or create an “honest whitelisting process” that would automatically allow honest apps through Samsung’s new barrier. When Samsung and Epic could not agree on the “basis” of this whitelisting process, Epic threatened legal action and even passed on a draft of today’s legal complaint to Samsung.

Samsung would neither confirm nor deny this The edge whether Auto Blocker actually scans an app for threats or suspicious activity. It would neither confirm nor deny whether the feature was a collaboration with Google.

But Google appears to deny collusion: “Google did not ask Samsung to develop its auto-blocking feature,” said part of a statement from Dave Kleidermacher, Google’s Android security chief. Here is his full statement:

Epic’s latest lawsuit is a baseless and dangerous move. Google didn’t ask Samsung to develop its auto-blocking feature.

While Android allows sideloading, Google and the security community have been warning users for years about the real risks associated with downloading apps directly from the Internet. In the US, federal agencies, NGOs and fintech associations have guidance highlighting this issue. Governments around the world have asked for additional solutions to better protect users from fraud, theft and abuse from sideloaded apps that cause real harm to people’s lives. That’s why Google offers its own security features like Google Play Protect, which checks a user’s device for malicious apps regardless of where the app was downloaded. Android device manufacturers are free to innovate and develop additional security features for their devices.

Relating this to access to a game is deliberately misleading; This is about user safety. And Epic’s lawsuit puts its corporate interests above user protection.”

Samsung also notes that it does not secretly or silently turn on Auto-Blocker; It gives users a choice. “The default setting for Auto Blocker is set to On in the phone’s initial setup wizard, but you can also change this setting to Off during the initial setup,” the company’s support page says.

Here’s Samsung’s full statement, provided by spokesperson Chris Langlois:

Contrary to Epic Game’s claims, Samsung actively promotes competition in the market, expands consumer choice, and conducts its business fairly.

The features built into our devices are designed in accordance with Samsung’s core principles of security, privacy and user control, and we remain fully committed to protecting users’ personal information. Users have the option to disable the automatic blocker at any time.

We plan to vigorously contest Epic Game’s unfounded claims.

“This is a baseless lawsuit. Android device manufacturers are free to take their own steps to ensure the safety of their users,” said an additional statement from Google spokesman Dan Jackson.

It is not yet clear whether Epic was harmed by Auto Blocker. Since Samsung enabled the feature by default, only two new Samsung phones have shipped. While Sweeney claims that Google’s previous attempts to disrupt third-party apps (“Unknown Sources”) have resulted in half of the people who clicked “Download” partially giving up, he admits that he hasn’t heard any yet There is data to prove that the Samsung function works, but things can get worse.

He says the Epic Games Store has now reached 10 million mobile installs, against a “completely achievable” 100 million goal by the end of the year. He characterizes this as “traction, but not huge.”

In Epic vs Google, The company argued that Unknown Sources’ installation process made it so difficult to attract new users to a competing app store that Sweeney was eventually forced to move there Fortnite to Google’s store, even though he promised Samsung he wouldn’t do it. Although the jury wasn’t asked to rule on “Unknown Sources” specifically, it concluded that Epic was harmed overall by Google’s conduct.

Epic is again demanding a jury trial this time.

Speaking of which Epic vs Googlewe expect Judge James Donato to issue his final order there any day, and it’s easy to imagine a world in which Epic vs Samsung will be influenced by how he decides to change Google’s behavior. If he agrees to Epic’s biggest demands, the Google Play Store would be forced to carry the Epic Games Store and other app stores inside and third-party app stores like Epic’s would also gain access to Google Play’s entire app catalog. In this world, Auto Blocker seems a little less relevant.

However, an appeal from Google is guaranteed, and Epic is positioning today’s new lawsuit as a way to stop Google and its partners from pursuing a “malicious compliance strategy” in the meantime. One could even argue that Judge Donato asked for it: in Epic vs GoogleHe repeatedly told Epic’s lawyers that he would not grant their request for an anti-circumvention clause to stop Google from getting creative with workarounds.

“We don’t have any injunctions that don’t involve violations of the law. If you have a problem, you can come back,” he said last November.

Sweeney wouldn’t necessarily commit to suing other companies that put up barriers to third-party app stores, but says Epic is “watching this very closely.”

“Fortunately, no one but Samsung has done this, and we hope it stays that way.”

Update, September 30th: Added new Google statement confirming that Samsung was not asked to develop the auto-blocker feature; It previously added that Samsung and Google would neither confirm nor deny whether they collaborated on Auto Blocker or whether Auto Blocker scans for threats.