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Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, alleged Alphabet's Google and Samsung conspired to limit competition by restricting downloads from stores other than theirs.
According to Epic, Samsung's Auto Blocker is intended to discourage consumers from installing applications from third-party application stores. This protects the Google Play Store and Samsung Galaxy Store from competitors.
Epic Games announced Monday that it would file a lawsuit against the technology company in federal court in California.
The lawsuit will assert how the Samsung Auto-Block feature introduced towards the end of 2023, has hampered competition. Further noting that this feature violates US antitrust laws by keeping app prices higher than what they should have been in an open market environment.
Auto Blocker was pitched as an opt-in feature, that would add one more layer of security, to block potentially risky downloads of apps.
However, Samsung allegedly made it a default setting back in July 2024, making it hard to disable or bypass. This setting stops users from downloading a non-Google or non-Samsung app store, thus benefiting both the tech giants and harming competition.
Epic’s CEO, Tim Sweeney said, "Google is pretending to keep the user safe by saying you're not allowed to install apps from unknown sources. Well, Google knows what Fortnite is, as they have distributed it in the past."
It is not the first battle Epic has had with Google and Samsung in court.
In December 2023, Epic sued Google for monopolizing app distribution and payments. Epic won the case on the argument that Google should make it easier for users to download apps outside Google Play. This latest complaint by Epic now pushes the case further.
Apart from the US, Epic is going to raise concerns with the regulators of the European Union who have been reviewing Google's business practices nearly for a decade now.
Epic had earlier protested how Google along with Apple has been charging developers a 30% commission on the in-app payments.
This was not the first time Google has been under fire by the European Union for stifling competition. The giant was fined 2.4 billion euros by the European Commission for infringement of antitrust rules. Read more
Samsung said it intends to "vigorously contest" what it termed Epic's "baseless claims." Google has not commented on the claims yet.
The outcome of this lawsuit will significantly affect how users access apps on an Android device and, potentially, reshape the app distribution landscape.
