Google and Epic Games will reportedly be in court Monday (Feb. 3) as Google seeks a reversal of a judge’s order that it allow rival app stores with its Play store.The 2023 jury verdict and October 2024 judge’s order that Google aims to overturn resulted from an antitrust case brought by Epic Games, Reuters reported Monday.Epic Games launched its lawsuit in 2020, alleging that Google monopolized access to apps on Android devices and payments made within apps, according to the report.The judge’s order delivered in October required Google to make a number of changes to restore competition, the report said.In its appeal of that ruling, Google has argued that its Play store competes with Apple’s App Store, that the judge unfairly allowed Epic Games to tell jurors that Google and Apple are not competitors, and that the judge was wrong to issue an order that affects not just Epic but users and developers nationwide, per the report.Epic said, per the report, that it will “fight to ensure that the jury’s verdict and the court’s injunction are upheld and Google is held to account for its anticompetitive behavior.”The court could rule on the appeal later this year, and the decision could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the report.When the judge’s order was announced in October, Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said in a post on X that Epic’s victory in the lawsuit meant that the Epic Games Store and other app stores would come to the Google Play Store in 2025 in the U.S., “without Google’s scare screens and Google’s 30% app tax.”Google said in a blog post that it would appeal the verdict and ask the courts to pause the implementation of the judge’s remedies, pending the appeal.“As we have already stated, these changes would put consumers’ privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps, and reduce competition on devices,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president, regulatory affairs at Google, said in the post.When the antitrust jury trial kicked off in November 2023, reports said it could reshape the Android app store landscape

Epic Games will reportedly add third-party games to its marketplace app on Android globally and on Apple iOS in the European Union.“The news is out,” the company said in a Thursday (Jan. 23) post on social platform X. “We’re bringing a bunch of awesome new third-party games to the Epic Games Store on mobile but ran into a few bugs that we’re working through now. We’ll provide an update once the games are live and ready to play!”The news is out! We’re bringing a bunch of awesome new third-party games to the Epic Games Store on mobile but ran into a few bugs that we’re working through now. We’ll provide an update once the games are live and ready to play! — Epic Games Store (@EpicGames) January 23, 2025Reuters reported Thursday that Epic Games will add third-party games to its own marketplace on the two operating systems.The videogame company launched its mobile game store in 2024 to avoid fees imposed by Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store when making in-app purchases, according to the report.By the end of 2024, Epic Games’ mobile store reached 29 million users, the report said.When announcing the addition of third-party games Thursday, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the company aims to build “a single cross-platform store,” per the report.“We are opening up the Epic Games Store to mobile games from third parties, starting with a small catalog and expanding over time to a very big catalog,” Sweeney said, according to the report.Epic debuted its mobile app store that challenges Apple’s App Store in August after a yearslong legal battle and the implementation of new legislation in Europe that redrew the competitive map, PYMNTS reported at the time.In an Aug. 15 blog post announcing the launch of the Epic Games Store, Epic said it was continuing to fight in courts and work with regulators around the globe to eliminate “anticompetitive terms” imposed by Apple and Google.“We’re launching on iOS devices in the European Union thanks to the Digital Markets Act, but Apple is still blocking all other iOS users outside of Europe from accessing Fortnite and Epic Games Store for iOS,” the company said in its post

According to developer Epic Games, there's a small chance that a portal will pop up on the map during Battle Royale matches.