Epic Games Asks Seeks Legal Help to stop Google from Removing Bandcamp from the Play Store

Epic Games has recently filed a legal motion to stop Google from pulling Bandcamp – an independent music storefront, from the Play Store on Android devices. Google has threatened to remove the music storefront because it uses its individual billing system instead of paying an app store fee to the company.

Epic Games acquired Bandcamp in March this year. The app has its billing system on Android systems since 2015 and could do so since digital music has the exemption to use Google’s billing system by law.

The co-founder and CEO of Bandcamp said Google seems to have modified its rules to require digital music apps like Bandcamp to exclusively use Google Play Billing to pay for digital products and services. The company also wants to have a revenue share from such apps.

According to new Google rules, all digital music apps, including Bandcamp, would need to modify from 1st June 2022. Mr. Diamond believes Google is forcing Bandcamp to choose between forwarding fees to customers, forwarding fees to music artists, doing its Android business with a loss, or canceling digital sales in the PlayStore on Android devices. In other words, it would force Epic Games to modify the latest business model used for Bandcamp.

Epic Games says moving to Google’s Billing system and paying Google a 10% share of revenue would disturb its capacity to keep paying music artists an 82-percent of their Bandcamp profits. It is worth mentioning that Google charges a 30-percent of profit share from the apps on the Android app. It seemingly offered Epic Games some soft deals by keeping it ten percent.

However, Epic argues that paying Google a 10-percent profit share would force the company to modify Bandcamp’s current business model or run the business at a long-term loss. The current payment system enables music artists to get paid within two days after the sale. Epic Games claim modification in the current business model of the digital music app might also require artists to wait longer for their earnings because Google takes 15 to 45 days after a sale to pay.

Epic’s argument sounds genuine and winning, but another platform failed to get the desired results using it. Fanhouse is a platform that pays creators. It tried the same stance against the tech giant Apple in 2021, but it ended up paying off a 50-percent extra for the company’s tax. This incident could be a reason for Epic to seek legal assistance rather than trying to shame Google publically.

Epic perhaps wants to use the digital music app of Bandcamp as a gamble in its battle against Apple and Google. The company went to the court against Google and Apple last year, accusing both platforms of antitrust violations after removing Fortnite from their stores. It happened when Epic launched its separate in-app payment mechanism to the game, though the case Google will not go under trial before next year. Epic’s today’s filing says Google is modifying its rules under the excuse of a clarification announced in September 2020, but it has not influenced Epic Games.