Four years ago, Epic Games accused Google of monopolizing the Android application market and managed to prove its case in court last December. Now the Fortnite developer has again filed a lawsuit against Google and Samsung, accusing the companies of illegally conspiring to undermine the activities of third-party digital content stores.
Image source: Kandinsky
The reason for going to court was the “Auto-lock” function, which is activated by default in new Samsung smartphones. When this option is enabled, users cannot install apps unless they have been downloaded from “authorized sources,” which only includes Google and Samsung’s proprietary app stores. Epic Games’ lawsuit claims that no third-party app store can become “authorized.”
When Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Google and Apple in August 2020, the company did not yet have its own mobile app store. Now it is: on August 16, the Epic Games Store for Android launched worldwide, as well as a version of the platform for iOS in the European Union, where current legislation forced Apple to allow alternative stores on its platform.
Epic Games claims that a month before the launch of its own store, Samsung suddenly decided to enable the automatic blocking of applications received from third-party sources on its devices by default. The authors of the lawsuit believe that this feature prevents users from choosing their own platform for downloading applications. It is claimed that using a third-party app store on Samsung smartphones now requires going through an “exceptionally complex 21-step process”, increasing the likelihood that users will abandon the idea.
The lawsuit also states that the Auto-Block feature does not conduct any security assessment of a specific source or a specific application before blocking its installation. “This feature is not intended to protect against malware, which would be perfectly legal. It is designed to prevent competition,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. At the same time, he admitted that he has no evidence of deliberate collusion between Google and Samsung, but he hopes that this can be established during the trial.
Sweeney also admitted that his company did not approach Samsung with a request to make the Epic Games Store an “authorized source.” Instead, he privately asked Samsung to either make the Auto-Lock feature disabled by default or work on a fair process for whitelisting stores and apps that would bypass install locks on Samsung smartphones. However, the companies could not reach an agreement, after which Epic Games decided to go to court.
Samsung hasn’t confirmed or denied whether the Auto-Lock feature actually scans an app for threats or suspicious activity. The company also did not specify whether this option was developed in collaboration with Google. A Google spokesperson said the company has not reached an agreement with Samsung to ban the installation of applications from third-party sources. Samsung also noted that the Auto-Lock feature is not activated in stealth mode, so users have a choice. “In the Getting Started Smartphone Setup Wizard, Auto-Lock is set to On by default, but you can also change this setting to Off.” during initial setup,” Samsung said in a statement.