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WTF ?! While its ongoing feud with Apple is rather well documented, Epic Games is also in the midst of an antitrust complaint against Google over the removal of Fortnite from the Play Store. According to recently released court documents, Google at one point considered simply buying the company in order to quash a lawsuit.
In the documents, Epic claims Google was afraid of the steps Epic was taking to dodge the 30% commission charged on payments through Google Play and offer Fortnite (and his very associated lucrative microtransactions) directly, citing an internal document describing Epic’s plans as “contagion” that could spread to other developers and platforms. In Epic’s own words:
Google went so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to exclude competition, developed a series of internal projects to combat the “contagion” it perceived from Epic’s efforts and others to offer consumers and developers competitive products. alternatives, and even considered purchasing some or all of Epic to quell this threat.
It is still unclear when these talks took place, as the documents only have Epic citing internal second-hand posts, and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has made it clear that Google has never contacted Epic. with those discussions – in fact, Epic weren’t aware of them.
It’s unclear if this would have been a negotiation to buy Epic or some sort of hostile takeover attempt.
Here, Google also talks about the “frankly abysmal” sideloading experience they’ve created, while publicly touting Android as an “open platform.”
– Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) August 6, 2021
The company also alleges that Google contacted the vice president and co-founder of Epic to assess the merits of a special deal at Fortnite on the Play Store, as well as discussing how the game’s direct downloading and sideloading was “downright abysmal” and “a horrible experience” – a fact that Epic’s lawyers argue is intentional, saying Google has erected barriers to make side loading applications scary and precarious.
According to them, Google’s own staff has internally acknowledged that it offers a “[p]oor user experience “for aspiring sideloaders, with” 15+ steps to get the app [via sideloading] vs 2 steps with Play or on iOS “, far from the experience of directly downloading and installing, say, Google Chrome on a Windows PC.
Either way, the offer of a deal was turned down, and Epic claims Google responded to its decision to distribute directly. Fortnite by disseminating “exciting” statistics on the dangers of side-loaded applications to journalists covering this movement.
The complaint accuses Google of anti-competitive behavior with its applications as early as 2009, concluding agreements with equipment manufacturers and mobile network operators to “bring communities of developers and users to the Android market” and keep them away from competing storefronts of equipment manufacturers or mobile operators, as well as more recently, dropped the hammer on an attempted deal to include a dedicated Epic Games with OnePlus phones.
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