A judge has issued his final ruling in an ongoing lawsuit between Fortnite developer Epic Games and Android owner Google, and the ruling will no doubt be music to Epic’s ears.
According to The Verge, Judge James Donato has ruled that Google must now open up its Play Store on Android devices to third-party app stores such as the Epic Games Store, and it must, in The Verge’s words, give “rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps”.
Additionally, Google must stop requiring apps to use its Google Play Billing payment system, since the jury in the lawsuit found that the tying of this system to the Play Store was illegal. Given that that’s arguably where this whole mess began, that’s likely to please Epic.
Google must also allow developers to tell users about different payment methods, link to alternative app download sources, and set their own price for apps “irrespective of Play Billing”, as The Verge puts it.
However, it hasn’t all gone down in Epic’s favor. Judge Donato ruled that Google must open up the Play Store for three years, but Epic wanted six, and it also wanted users to be able to sideload apps with just one tap, which hasn’t been included in Judge Donato’s ruling.
Still, Judge Donato says that his ruling will give other app stores “a fighting chance” of competing with the Play Store, and Epic’s own Tim Sweeney is chalking this one up as a win as well.
Naturally, Google isn’t pleased with the changes. It says it plans to appeal the Epic verdict, stating that the changes will “cause a range of unintended consequences that will harm American consumers, developers, and device makers”. Ominous.
Epic’s battle against Google started at around the same time as its legal beef with Apple, and the grounds of both lawsuits were roughly the same; Apple and Google have a mobile duopoly and no other entity can compete with them.
As The Verge points out, that particular battle went worse for Epic, since the company’s final appeal against the decision that Apple doesn’t have a monopoly (a stance with which the House Antitrust Committee disagreed in 2020) was rejected in January.
Still, Tim Sweeney’s studio can enjoy this victory against Google, at least until the appeal begins. We’ll bring you more on this as soon as we get it.
