After launching an antitrust lawsuit against the Apple App Store in Australia in November last year, "Fortnite" developer Epic Games has now filed the same lawsuit against the Google Australia Play Store. According to a report that Epic initiated a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Australia, accusing the search giant of anti-competitive behavior in violation of the Consumer Act and antitrust provisions formulated by Australia. It is reported that this lawsuit is filed against Google LLC, Google Asia Pacific, and Google Australia.
Epic Games stated in a statement:
The Google Play Store restricts third-party payment processing and application distribution channels. This anti-competitive behavior hinders or prevents the ability of many application developers, including Epic, to distribute their software to Android OS device users. With Google having absolute control over the Play Store, the above restrictions have made the company almost monopolize the market. In addition to the 30% commission that developers are forced to pay for in-app purchases, Google also makes it extremely difficult to download related apps directly to Android device vendors, forcing most users to obtain them through the official Play Store.
Tim Sweeney, founder, and CEO of Epic added: Even if Google argues that there are alternative third-party app stores/downloads, this so-called openness is just a beautiful fantasy. Reality shows that this situation is so rare that it hardly has any impact on the monopolist of Android OS. The obstacles Google sets up on the Android OS are real, and the process of downloading apps directly is quite difficult and daunting. Although desktop applications can easily obtain fully normal permissions, the above difficulties still prevent most users from downloading apps from third-party websites.
In summary, instead of providing consumers with more options, Google is more inclined to pretend to be open. We firmly believe that consumers have the right to install applications from the source they choose, and developers have the right to compete in a fair market.