Epic Games sues Samsung and Google for making sideloading more difficult
After Apple, Epic Games has set its sights on Samsung and Google. The company behind Fortnite says Samsung and Google are frustrating the sideloading of games through One UI, a software layer that Samsung puts over Android.
Sideloading refers to allowing users to install games and apps outside the official app stores. Until the EU enforced this, Apple didn’t allow this anyway (and still doesn’t in other continents), but Android always allowed it.
Google did impose all sorts of restrictions to prevent malicious apps from being installed on smartphones.
But now Samsung has added another layer of protection with its new Auto-Blocker feature in One UI, a software layer that the company wants to use to differentiate itself from the bare Android versions.
Auto-Blocker was first released in 2023 on newer Galaxy devices. Users can disable the feature, but that requires additional actions.
When the feature was first discovered earlier this year, Epic Games removed Fortnite from Samsung’s Galaxy Store in protest.
Epic Games has since filed a lawsuit against both Samsung and Google because it believes the feature is illegal by arguing that third party app stores cannot be included in Auto-Blocker, preventing users from installing apps without additional steps. Epic added that Samsung’s new feature is enabled by default and requires an “exceptionally burdensome” 21-step process to download an app outside the Google Play Store or the Samsung Galaxy Store.
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