In a lawsuit filed in the Delhi High Court on Monday, WinZo is seeking “restraint from Google from implementing the arbitrary classification which will impact the reputation of WinZo’s business.”
Speaking to ET, Saumya Singh Rathore, co-founder, WinZo said that this policy excludes a large sector of real money games which have been classified as games of skill, making it unfair and restrictive.
“The selective inclusion of games which have been challenged in court (as games of skill) will put the other players in a detrimental position and distort the market. This effectively sends out a message that all other real money games are not legal, even though they are constitutionally protected by the Supreme Court as games of skill,” she said. The matter has been listed for hearing on Wednesday.
Google doesn’t list real money games on its Play store anywhere in the world. Earlier this month, it said it would run a year-long pilot project, starting on 28th September where it would allow DFS and Rummy products on the Playstore. Google Playstore is the largest app distribution platform with 97% market share in India. Other app stores like Apple, Mi and Samsung, among others, do list these games in their stores.
At that time, Roland Landers, CEO of the All India Gaming Federation (AGIF) had said that Google should have an inclusive approach towards adding all the other games of skill under the pilot project as well. “”This approach by Google especially will be challenging for MSMEs and new developers/platforms who will not be able to compete with established companies as their varied skill game offerings will be kept out of the Play Store ecosystem,” Landers said.
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Several players who are not part of this selection have raised concerns that games that have been left out would be seen as illegal and have an impact on their business. This includes games like chess, carrom and 8-ball pool, among others.
“Google Play, as a market leader, has a duty to act in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner. There does not seem to be a reason for selecting only DFS and Rummy. There is no engagement with industry to find out the dynamics. There is no evaluation of the impact that is likely to result from such a clearly discriminatory and arbitrary classification. Above all, we fail to understand as to how Google is being permitted to select that within a set of legal / legitimate businesses, only two will be onboarded and the others, excluded,” said Rathore.
She further added that this would result in a marketing and customer acquisition costs for the selected games to a quarter of earlier spends, making it detrimental to other players.
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