Epic, the company behind Unreal Engine and the infinite money-making machine fort nightsuing Google again. Recently defeated Google In an anti-competitive behavior lawsuit, the gaming company is at it again, this time dragging Samsung into the suit because its technology allegedly goes to great lengths to prevent the installation of third-party software.
In 2023, Epic successfully convinced a jury that Google’s practice of preventing alternative app stores from being allowed on its devices was anticompetitive, so the Epic Game Store (EGS) is now an app (starting this August) that you can play on your of Android devices, all over the world. (at the same time, European iOS players can now play fort night Waiting for people on their mobile deviceswhile the United States and the rest of the world still cannot.
The new case focuses on how painful it is to achieve the goals currently enforced by the law. If you try to install the Epic Game Store on any Android device, you know that you will be told that you have to change certain settings to allow the installation of external “unapproved” .apk files before you can mine them. How dangerous everything is. If you’re trying to do this on your Samsung, like I did recently when trying to place fort night On my son’s Samsung tablet, you’ll know it also involves ripping out a lot of hair.
It was this process that led Epic to file another lawsuit. according to a report edgeEpic claims that a month before its store went live, Samsung was prepared to enable an “auto-blocker” by default during the installation process, adding a slew of extras to the process of installing unapproved apps. step. As I discovered for myself, in a coffee shop I thought I could surprise the boy fort night When he forgot his Switch at home, he turned it on on his tablet.
Epic has Lists how to deactivate automatic blockers on its websitebut you won’t know you need to do this until Samsung sends a message saying it won’t install EGS and there’s no traditional link to the device settings section to make changes. In my case, I was using a Samsung-infected version of the Android Settings menu to search for the option (a feature that is often very useful), but it acted as if it didn’t exist. I ended up having to Google the entire process alone, and then fighting an extra layer of complexity – Google Family Link’s protections prevented my son from installing things without my permission, which in this particular case forced me Digging into Link’s settings on my own device to find things to deactivate – by this time I was getting really annoyed with my kid having his tablet taken away from me.
(Don’t judge me or him. My son and I have a tradition where every Saturday, after swimming lessons and before tennis lessons, we go to this cute cafe and play on tablets for 45 minutes.)
So what does this all mean for Google and Samsung? Well, the primary reason Epic was launched was Google’s alleged anti-competitive practices of forcing all third-party developers to offer or sell their apps through Google Play. As a result, 30% of transaction fees (including in-game payments) go directly to Google, which is a huge tithe on their service. Epic and many other companies hope they don’t have to lose nearly a third of their mobile revenue to another party when they have their own store service.
On the other hand, Google and other mobile operating system vendors believe that allowing users to install any .apk downloaded from the Internet is a huge security problem and the easiest way for malware to enter the phone. The companies will argue that blocking such actions by default is to protect device owners. However, Epic claims that this blocking is cumbersome and difficult to reverse and amounts to anti-competition for apps not sold through Play.
edge According to the report, Epic’s new legal filing describes the so-called security features as nonsense, saying “Auto Blocker does not evaluate the security of any specific source or any specific application before blocking installation.” CEO Tim Sweeney said , it is “not designed to protect against malware, which would be a perfectly legitimate purpose” but is “designed to prevent competition.”
However, Sweeney later admitted that he currently had no evidence that any of these issues would cause material harm to Epic, especially considering that EGS is currently installed on 10 million Android devices. He has no evidence yet of any collusion between Google and Samsung, but hopes it will be revealed during the discovery process, and said he is not asking Samsung to just make EGS an approved whitelisted app, but as always believes That’s because he’s not winning specifically for Epic, but for all developers in his position.
Still, it all may suddenly seem Very When we finally hear Judge Donato’s final ruling on how he’ll respond to Google’s losses since December, punks – it’s overdue. It’s possible that he will make some dramatic rulings, such as that Google must allow third-party app stores to completely replace Google’s Play Store and have the right to sell all the same apps that Play offers. “We will remove the barriers” other edge story “That’s how it happened,” the judge reportedly said.
If that happens, Epic won’t have to worry about Samsung’s frustrating .apk installation setup!
Oh, and the punchline? After finally installing EGS, he then confronted the tablet again and asked EGS to download his own application, only to find that his tablet was not powerful enough to run it. fort night. Worst dad ever.
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