Epic Games has expressed dissatisfaction with Google’s announcement of a pilot programme to test third-party billing systems in Android and across its wider ecosystem, beginning with Spotify.
The producer of the Fortnite video game, which sued Google after the company withdrew the game from Google Play Store due to its inclusion of direct payments, stated that it intends to continue campaigning for an open app environment, according to The Verge.
“Apple and Google continue to abuse their market power with policies that stifle innovation, inflate prices and reduce consumer choice,” Corie Wright, Epic’s VP of public policy, said in the statement late on Friday.
“One deal does not change the anti-competitive status quo. We will continue to fight for fair and open platforms for all developers and consumers,” Wright added.
Epic is not part of Google’s pilot programme.
The Google programme, which was announced earlier this week, will allow a small number of participating developers to offer a billing option in addition to Google Play’s billing system. The programme is intended to assist Google in exploring ways to offer this option to users while still investing in the ecosystem.
“We think that users should continue to have the choice to use Play’s billing system when they install an app from Google Play,” Sameer Samat, Vice President, Product Management, had said in a company blogpost.
The firm announced that it will collaborate with developers to investigate various implementations of user-choice billing, beginning with Spotify.
“As one of the world’s largest subscription developers with a global footprint and integrations across a wide range of device form factors, they are a natural first partner,” the company claimed.
Google’s announcement of “user choice billing” for “chosen” developers, according to the New Delhi-based Alliance of Digital India Foundation (ADIF), is a clear admission of guilt and an illusion of choice strategy.
