WinZO Games Sues Google Over Its Real-Money Gaming Pilot In India

WinZO Games has challenged Google's Play pilot programme in the Delhi High Court, calling the inclusion of only daily fantasy sports and rummy "selective".

WinZO Games, a social gaming platform hosting more than 100 games such as ludo, pool and racing games, said the programme in its current form "leaves out a large segment of skill-gaming platforms and indie developers", according to its statement.

"WinZO seeks restraint against Google from implementing the arbitrary classification which will impact the reputation of WinZO’s business. WinZO is among many other industry players, who have called the policy arbitrary, unfair and restrictive."

Earlier, too, Saumya Singh Rathore, co-founder of the platform, had called Google's move "discriminatory" and "unreasonable."

"Every other app store of the country, including the Apple Store, Vivo, Oppo, Mi Store, allows all skill-gaming products... Google, however, till date, did not allow any game with a pay-to-play format on the Google Play Store," she said. "This is going to be the death of fair-market practices and extremely discriminatory for innovative developers working on projects outside daily fantasy sports and rummy."

Google has yet to respond to BQ Prime's emailed queries.

This is not the first time WinZO has sued Google. In March, WinZO had filed a case against Google for displaying the warning "file might be harmful" on Chrome devices when trying to download apps outside the Play Store, through a specialised link. The matter is still in court.

Rathore said, "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."

Google's move to include daily fantasy sports and rummy is set to impact positively gaming unicorns such as Mobile Premier League, Dream11 and Games24x7, which have a large number of users logging in to make their teams for sporting events during leagues and tournaments or to play rummy.

She said the policy would not only reduce the marketing cost for players in monopoly to one-fourth of their earlier spends but also create a false perception of legitimation of daily fantasy sports and rummy over all other games such as carrom, chess, quiz, etc.

The company has sought an injunction restraining Google from implementing its revised Play Store policy—set to start on Sept. 28.

"A year-long pilot is detrimental to thousands of companies and can lead to irreversible market distortion of a fast-moving gaming tech industry, leading to death of many players as the strong gets stronger," she said.