Contributed by: kellyseal on Wednesday, October 19 2022 @ 11:57 am
Last modified on Wednesday, October 19 2022 @ 11:57 am
Match Group has joined Epic Games in expanding their lawsuit against Google and its Play Store, claiming the company paid developers to prevent Play Store competition.
According to a report by Engadget, the companies filed a motion with a federal court in the Northern District of California in October, accusing Google of paying off developers that had the financing and ability to create new Android app stores to compete with Google.
As Tech Crunch pointed out, this would be “a direct violation of U.S. antitrust law known as the Sherman Act,” the amended lawsuit states.
In the original lawsuit, Epic Games and Match Group detailed a program called “Project Hug” that paid game developers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their games on the Google Play store, notably following the release of Epic Games’ Fortnight in 2018 (where it was made available outside of Google Play, bypassing their fees).
Google has said the project was to help developers “with additional promotions, resources, and investments, and was deemed a success as Google signed deals with many of Project Hug’s targets, including Activision Blizzard,” according to Tech Crunch[*1] . Match Group and Epic Games argue that this was instead a payoff.
Google was concerned that Epic Games’ moving the super-popular Fortnight outside of its Play Store for Android users would set a precedent for other game companies and developers in general, and that Epic may choose to partner with a big player like Samsung for a “preinstall deal,” according to Tech Crunch. If the move led to alternative Android app stores open to all developers, it would upset Google Play’s revenue stream.
The game was later made available on Google Play in 2020, but subsequently removed for allowing users to bypass fees when making in-app purchases.
Google responded to the amended lawsuit, claiming that there is no new evidence to attach to the lawsuit.
“Epic and Match are adding more inaccurate claims to their failing lawsuits and we’re looking forward to setting the record straight in court,” a spokesperson for Google said in a statement published by Tech Crunch. “The program on which Epic and Match base their claims simply provides incentives for developers to give benefits and early access to Google Play users when they release new or updated content; it does not prevent developers from creating competing app stores, as they allege. In fact, the program is proof that Google Play competes fairly with numerous rivals for developers, who have a number of choices for operating systems and app stores,” they said.