ALBAWABA - Epic Games, the company developing Fortnite, has announced that it is filing a lawsuit against the two leading technology companies, Google and Samsung, accusing them of unlawfully conspiring to prevent competition on Samsung smartphones.
Four years after Epic filed a lawsuit against Google for operating an unlawful app store monopoly, which it ultimately won in this past December, CEO Tim Sweeney said that his business will submit a claim in a federal court in the state of California, the same jurisdiction in which Epic prevailed in its fight with Google.
Epic contends that Samsung's recent adoption of the 'Auto Blocker' function was purposefully created in conjunction with Google in order to proactively undercut the legal solution that the United States District Court reached in response to the decision that the jury made in Epic's action against Google.
According to Epic, the process of downloading an application from a source other than the Google Play Store or the Samsung Galaxy Store involves an extraordinarily tedious 21-step procedure. This procedure is similar to the "Unknown Sources" procedure that Google uses, which consists of several stages and scare screens.
Tim Sweeney, Epic Chief Executive, stated to reporters “It's about unfair competition by misleading users into thinking competitors' products are inferior to the company's products themselves,” as reported by Reuters.
“Google is pretending to keep the user safe saying you're not allowed to install apps from unknown sources. Well, Google knows what Fortnite is as they have distributed it in the past,” Sweeney added.
In a statement, Google referred to Epic's lawsuit as "meritless" and said that Android device manufacturers "are free to take their own steps to keep their users safe and secure." Samsung, on the other hand, stated that it plans to "vigorously contest Epic Games' baseless claims."
