On Tuesday, its poker, rummy, and casual games creator Winzo stated that it would sue Google at the Delhi High Court for discrimination, only allowing fantasy and rummy sports apps to be downloaded from the Play Store. Google hasn’t permitted genuine money-gaming apps that allow gambling and betting in India in the past but recently announced that it was conducting a one-year trial with Rummy and fantasy sports apps.
Google’s narrow potential for this pilot enlarges the monopolies of the fantasy sports companies like Dream11 and also hurts app developers such as Winzo with various real money game concepts in their applications, Winzo co-founder Saumya Singh Rathore has told Entrackr.
Google has not commented. However, the company has not thought of introducing additional real-money gaming applications in its test. The hearing will be held on Thursday.
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This isn’t the only time Winzo has filed a lawsuit against Google for its app’s distribution. The company in March filed a lawsuit against Google for the warning Google Chrome displayed on mobile devices that were seeking to install the Winzo app, which said, “File might be harmful,” the standard warning displayed to users whenever they download applications outside of the Play Store. Rathore claimed to Entrackr that the warning made 75 out of 100 users who chose to download the app alter their minds.
In the court records that were obtained from The Entrackr, the lawyers representing Google claimed that the lawsuit had been “frivolous, infructuous and warranted [ed] dismissal,” the lawyers claimed that Chrome and other browsers display a similar message to any APK files downloaded through in the Play Store and that it’s not only Winzo that is affected by that prompt. Google claimed it was able to show that prompt because the IT Rules 2021 allowed it to show the prompt as a security measure.
Google also provided reviews of Winzo’s iOS application which is accessible through the App Store. Multiple users claim they were scammed by the app or were unable to withdraw funds.
“WinZO is among many other industry players, such as MPL and Zupee, among others, who have called [Google’s rummy and fantasy sports pilot] policy arbitrary, unfair and restrictive,” the company stated via a statement to announce its latest lawsuit. (An MPL spokesperson denied that it had criticized the pilot in this manner.)
“The “pilot is detrimental to thousands of companies and can lead to irreversible market distortion of a fast-moving gaming tech industry, leading to the death of many players as the strong get stronger,” Rathore declared in an interview.
Version 1.0 (September 21): Added denial from MPL against Google’s Rummy/DFS Pilot and changed the date of hearings in the hearing in the Winzo matter.
