Today, the jury in the Epic v. Google case voted in Epic’s favour, stating that Google has been operating an illegal monopoly within the Google Play app store payment system.
The company has taken on both Apple and Google, with Google’s trial beginning on November 6th, 2023. After what sounds like a short deliberation, the jury came back today, ruling that Google had indeed been guilty.
The developer posted to their blog about the win today and gave some insight on the proceedings, “Over the course of the trial, we saw evidence that Google was willing to pay billions of dollars to stifle alternative app stores by paying developers to abandon their own store efforts and direct distribution plans, and offering highly lucrative agreements with device manufacturers in exchange for excluding competing app stores.”
On X (formally Twitter), onlookers seem to be pleased with Epic’s win. User @xy0o0 said, “big win for @EpicGames, jury found Google an illegal monopoly,” with others like @TGIFresco thinking this will mean a win against Apple will be next, stating, “Epic just won their antitrust lawsuit against Google. Apple will likely be next. Huge for game developers everywhere and will be super interesting to see what happens next.”
Though we don’t know exactly what this means yet for apps and mobile gaming, Epic knows how important this case was, and not just for them, “The evidence presented in this case demonstrates the urgent need for legislation and regulations that address Apple and Google strangleholds over smartphones, including with promising legislation in progress right now with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill in the UK and the Digital Markets Act in the EU.”
With one battle won, Epic Games was grateful, to say the least, “Thank you to the Court for hearing this important case and for the next steps determining the remedies that will right Google’s decades of anticompetitive conduct. And thank you to the jury for their historic decision. The one million game developers who couldn’t be here, thank you!”
