Epic is suing Google and Samsung over its Auto Blocker barrier to other app stores

Epic Games is filing another legal complaint against Google and Samsung, claiming the latter’s Auto Blocker feature is a barrier to alternative app stores and is contrary to a jury verdict last year.

Auto-blocking is a feature that Samsung introduced to its mobile devices in October 2023 that allows users to automatically prevent the installation of apps that were not distributed through the Google Play Store or Samsung Galaxy Store.

Originally, this feature was available as an option, allowing those who wanted to sideload apps to continue doing so, but in July 2024, Samsung revealed that it would be enabled by default. In this way, all Samsung devices automatically prevent the user from installing alternative app stores such as the Epic Games Store, which launched last month on mobile devices.

In its complaint filed with the Northern District of California, Epic Games calls on the court to prevent Samsung from enabling auto-blocking by default and to prohibit “anti-competitive and unfair conduct” by Samsung and Google.

The company is also seeking a jury trial to resolve this dispute, as well as monetary and punitive damages, as well as legal fees.

Epic Games says that once auto-blocking is enabled, users must go through an “extremely cumbersome 21-step process” to download a third-party app, such as its own game store. For comparison, on Android it already takes 12 steps (according to Epic estimates) due to numerous warnings about software from unknown sources.

Samsung’s Auto Blocker also labels the Epic Games Store as software from an “unknown” source, with Epic arguing that this contradicts the fact that Samsung has previously placed some of its games on the Galaxy Store.

“As an app developer, Epic has been harmed by Samsung’s false representations that its apps are unknown and unsafe,” the company wrote in its complaint. “These false claims not only damage Epic’s reputation, but lead to identifiable instances of users abandoning their Epic app installations, resulting in lost profits that would have resulted from purchases made by those users.”

Epic says the auto-blocking feature “deems the Google Play Store the only viable way to download apps to Samsung devices, preventing any other store from competing on a level playing field.”

Epic also claims that the Samsung-Google partnership undermines the jury verdict in its previous antitrust case against Google, which it won in December.

The jury unanimously voted that Google exhibited anticompetitive behavior in a number of ways, including requiring developers to use the Play Store’s payment system for all transactions and allegedly offering financial incentives to developers to stay on the store.

“The jury’s decision was unanimous and clear; Google’s agreements with OEMs to block competitors are illegal,” Epic Games said in a statement. “This applies not only to Google, but also to device manufacturers that work with it. We will take all necessary steps to ensure that this decision is fully upheld.”