According to the latest reports, following the appeal of the Apple v. Epic Games lawsuit, Google also filed a defense and counterclaim on Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit against the company on Monday afternoon. The tech giant and the Android manufacturer denied Epic’s allegations of antitrust behavior but said it should be financially subsidized because Epic Games allowed players who downloaded the app via Google Play to use Epic’s own payment processing technology. Which violates the Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement (DDA).
This situation is similar to what happened on the App Store. Epic Games updated its apps to circumvent the App Store’s policies and then promoted payments through its own payment system, which violated its legal contract with Apple. The court’s ruling in the Apple case is that Epic should provide Apple with a financial subsidy in the amount of $6 million.
Counterclaims that Epic Games has done a lot of the same thing on Google Play. Last year, Epic submitted a version of Fortnite to Google Play, which uses Epic’s own direct payment system instead of Google Play Billing. This version was immediately rejected because it did not comply with Google’s policies. Subsequently, Epic submitted a compliant version in April 2020, and Google now describes it as a deception designed to provoke lawsuits.
The new version hides Epic’s payment system in updates sent to Apple and Google’s app stores. This will allow Epic to switch to its payment system through application server-side configuration changes or hotfixes without Google’s knowledge.
This switch was turned on on August 13, 2020. It allows users of Fortnite to choose between Google Play Billing and Epic’s own direct payment system. The move was to trigger the game’s rejection by the app store and pave the way for Epic to proceed with its planned lawsuit. Google stated that it notified Epic Games on the same day that it applied the hotfix, that it violated DDA, Google’s Malicious Behavior Policy, and Google Play Billing Policy.
In addition, Google also added the Fortress Night is removed from Google Play. However, it did not disable the Epic account to allow the game developer to resubmit a version that meets the requirements. However, the counterclaim pointed out that Android users who download games from Google Play can still use Epic’s own payment system even after the application is removed, which allows Epic to evade the contractual service fee for Google. Google requires the court to return this input loss, in addition to other damages, attorney’s fees, interest, and any other relief that the court deems necessary.
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The counterclaim wrote: Epic is a multi-billion dollar company backed by the two largest video game developers in the world. It has made huge profits from the secure and reliable platform provided by Google Play. The fees paid by the platform are equivalent to or lower than those of other major platform providers. It is not satisfied with these huge profits, and reached a legal agreement with Google that it never intended to comply with, deceived Google, and concealed its true intentions. There has been a legal and public relations confrontation that continues to this day. Its actions put its users at risk and have harmed Google.
Although Epic Games did not comment on the counterclaim filed by Google, its position has always been that it is a monopoly for Apple and Google to require the full use of their own in-app payment system, which is not good for developers. In the Apple case, the court agreed that Apple should not prevent developers from sharing links to other payment methods in their apps or communicating with users. But it did not declare that Apple is a monopoly.
But Google’s situation is a bit different because the Android system already allows sideloading of apps-which means there is another way to reach Android users outside of Google Play, which makes antitrust claims in this case even more difficult. In addition, Google has also submitted replies to the state’s attorney general, developer and consumer cases.