Epic Games, the company behind the popular computer game Fortnite, has opened a new front in the legal battle against Google. The video game maker has also filed a lawsuit in Australia against alleged distortion of competition within the Google Play Store.
The lawsuit comes after similar lawsuits filed by Epic Games against Google and Apple in the US, European Union and UK. The crux of the complaint is that the two tech groups are forcing app developers to give up a portion of their income.
For apps downloaded through the App Store or Google Play, Apple and Google respectively require that their payment system be used when making in-app purchases. In Epic Games, for example, these are the currencies that players in the Fortnite shooting game can purchase.
Unlike Apple, Google still allows downloading apps from its own app stores within its Android OS. But in the new indictment, Epic Games alleges that Google is making this “horribly difficult”, which the search engine maker may violate consumer protection laws.
Series of lawsuits filed by Epic Games against Apple and Google after Fortnite removed from their download stores. The video game company is not alone in its complaints about the commission policy within the app stores. For example, Spotify, Facebook and a host of media companies like Bloomberg, The New York Times and Disney believe that Apple should do something about commissions for payments within its app store.
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