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Synopsis

Social gaming platform WinZO has challenged Google's recent Playstore policy before the Delhi High Court alleging that Google is selectively including only Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and Rummy on the Google Play Store, leaving out a large segment of skill gaming platforms and indie developers.

WinZO in its petition sought direction retraining Google from implementing the arbitrary classification which will impact the reputation of WinZo’s business.

WinZO's press release stated that it is among many other industry players, such as MPL and Zupee which have called the policy arbitrary, unfair and restrictive. It believes that Google’s policy can lead to distortions in the competitive Indian gaming ecosystem by resulting in unparalleled access to the 2.5 billion monthly active users across 190 countries where the Google Play Store is available.

In view of Google’s Updated policies and challenge to the same, Saumya Singh Rathore, Co-founder, WinZO Games said, “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 the 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."

"This policy will not only reduce the marketing cost for players in monopoly to 1/4^th of their earlier spends but also create a false perception of legitimation of DFS & Rummy over all other games such as Carrom, Chess, Quiz, etc. In the fast-evolving sunrise sector, gaming, a level playing field is key to innovation and success. 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 added.