Last year Epic Games commenced its legal battle against Apple over restrictive practices employed by Apple on its App Store. This lawsuit sprawled across several jurisdictions, including the United States, Australia, and Europe. Now Epic bears its fangs against Google in Australia over commissions charged on the Google Play Store.
Regardless of whether a company has their own payment system, when listed with Google or Apple, game developers are forced to use the payment mechanisms built in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. This typically brings in a commission of around 30% from all in-app purchase and when coupled with Epic’s immensely popular game Fortnite, Apple and Google pocket an exorbitant fee. To put this into perspective, in 2020, Fortnite netted close to $1.8B USD!
Epic is following its same argument of consumer protection and anti-competitive conduct, claiming that Google is breaching Australian consumer law “by abusing its control over the Android operating system.” However, unlike the Apple case, Google does permit alternative payment systems to be made from third-party providers. But despite the possibility to do so, consumers and developers claim that this is overly complicated and designed to disincentivise users from downloading apps outside of the Google Play Store. CEO of Epic Tim Sweeney went so far as to say that “Google gives the illusion of being open” but in reality, masks its monopoly of the Android operating system.
Much like the Apple case, Epic is not after restitution or damages but is rather seeking court orders to mandate “fair access and competition” on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Accordingly, by launching over six lawsuits against Apple and Google, Epic has proven its cares for its consumers and the proper administration of competition and consumer law. Moreover, Epic’s spark has woken up other key players such as Facebook and Spotify to make similar claims against Apple’s uncompetitive behaviour. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds as American, European, and Australian regulatory authorities’ band together to challenge these dominant tech giants.