Epic Games Keeps Google’s Feet to the Fire

Of course the maker of “Fortnite” wants to turn its fight with Google into a battle royale.

Epic Games on Monday filed a lawsuit against both Google and Samsung, pulling the South Korean electronics giant into its long-running legal beef with the Android-maker. Epic alleges in the suit that Google and Samsung conspired to suppress third-party app stores, a.k.a. anything other than the Google Play Store.

The Legal Battle Bus

Epic Games is possibly the biggest player in an ongoing war between app developers and the two Big Tech companies that dominate app stores: Apple and Google. It’s a war that’s pulled in a wide range of combatants, from fellow Big Tech companies like Meta down to music streaming platforms and even tiny email service providers. While the developer ire against Apple has perhaps been the most intense, essentially the arguments against both Apple and Google are the same: Because they have a duopoly on how apps get installed on your phone, they exert too much restrictive control.

Epic Games notched a major win in that fight at the end of last year, winning an antitrust case it filed against Google. But the fight isn’t over yet:

• Epic’s new lawsuit against Google and Samsung accuses the two companies of using a default feature called “Auto-Blocker” on Samsung phones, which blocks users from downloading apps from anywhere other than Google or Samsung’s stores.
• In August, Epic launched its own app store on mobile — the makeup of the mobile app market is even more crucial to Epic’s success now than it was when it filed its first lawsuit against Google in 2020.

Bruised Apples: Epic Games also scored a win against Apple this year, as new European Union legislation meant the Epic Games Store could open on both Android devices and iPhones. Our condolences to parents of European tweens, as it’ll be even harder to pry them away from the game now.