by After scoring an unexpected victory in the years-long court battle with tech giant Google, Epic Games has decided it wants another restart, and this time it’s dragging Samsung into the fray for good measure.
As funny as it is to imagine Epic CEO Tim Sweeney telling Tim Cook to “get more guys to make this a fair fight,” Samsung is actually at the heart of this particular lawsuit. The issue centers on Epic’s plan to launch its own store on Android devices, allowing it to distribute its own games, and eventually others, without taking a huge hit to revenue. Epic is legally allowed to do this after winning in court – and it has – but Google and Samsung, Epic claims, are making the process as difficult as possible to deter users from actually using it.
“We have filed a lawsuit against Google and Samsung for their coordinated efforts to block competition in app distribution on Samsung devices with Samsung’s Auto Blocker feature enabled by default,” Epic wrote in the lawsuit announcement. “Auto Blocker is the latest in a long line of transactions in which Google and Samsung have agreed not to compete to protect Google’s monopoly power. Auto Blocker cements the Google Play Store as the only viable way to get apps on Samsung devices, blocking all others. store from competition on a level playing field.
“Our lawsuit alleges that Samsung’s recent implementation of the Auto Blocker feature was deliberately designed in collaboration with Google to preemptively undermine the U.S. court’s remedy following the jury’s verdict in Epic v. Google. The jury found that Google’s app store practices are illegal, including the unlawful agreements Google makes with phone manufacturers such as Samsung.”
Samsung’s Auto Blocker prevents users from installing software from unapproved sources, ostensibly a security feature to ensure Android owners don’t end up with malicious software on their phones. That in itself is not very unusual. Epic’s problem stems from the fact that Auto Blocker was originally an opt-in feature when it launched in October 2023, according to the lawsuit, but in July 2024 – shortly before the launch of the Epic Games Store on mobile – Samsung changed this is enabled by default.
What makes matters worse is that the process to disable it is a chore: “An exceptionally onerous 21-step process,” as Epic put it. To reinforce this point, Epic included images of all 21 steps involved; Not an insurmountable task, but it certainly looks like a headache.
Epic claims in the lawsuit that enabling Auto Blocker by default was “a coordinated decision between Google and Samsung,” and says that during its roughly 15 years as an Android device maker, Samsung has never imposed “additional frictions” or blocks in the area from direct download or third party stores on its devices. The lawsuit alleges that Google and Samsung have engaged in “a host of atypical communications between companies that go far beyond the ‘standard fare’ of business and trade association practice,” and that Samsung’s move to help ” to entrench the Play Store monopoly” only creates that feeling “as part of a quid pro quo” between the companies.
The net result, said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, is to drive Android owners away from third-party stores and back to the Play Store, where Google can take its 30% revenue hit.
“If we try to compete with Google Play and the Samsung Galaxy Store and their 70% revenue share by offering developers an 88% revenue share, but 50% of our users give up, then after taking into account lost users and lost revenue, which has been reduced by 88% to an effective revenue share of 44%,” said Sweeney, hopefully wearing chain mail “Literally no store can compete with the incumbents if they are disadvantaged in this way. To have true competition, all reputable stores and apps must be free to compete on a level playing field. This is what our lawsuit seeks.”
We have filed new antitrust and unfair competition claims against Google and Samsung. A jury found that Google’s practices are illegal and we are concerned that Google is encouraging Android hardware makers and providers to adopt and continue Google’s unlawful practices ahead of… https://t.co /gBRFYgripdSeptember 30, 2024
As reported by The Verge, Sweeney acknowledged in an interview that Epic has no evidence of collusion, but he hopes that will come out as part of the discovery process. He also said that Epic did not seek approval as an “authorized source” from Samsung because the intention is not to gain “special privileges” for Epic, but to make the platforms more accessible to all developers. He also said he had privately approached Samsung to request that Auto Blocker be reverted to an opt-in feature, or that Samsung create “a fair whitelisting process” that would allow users to access legitimate apps, but the two companies could unable to agree on how to make it work, leading to legal action.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of Sweeney’s comments in August about Apple’s “malicious compliance” in the European Union: The EU’s Digital Markets Act 2022 requires Apple allows third-party storefronts on iOS devices, but Apple has not. I didn’t make that process easy either. That’s a separate and ongoing process (complicated by the fact that the US isn’t requiring Apple to allow third-party stores), but there’s certainly some sort of thematic similarity: the proverbial letter of the law is followed, but the spirit of it: in Epic’s eyes – remains elusive.
