To keep that money spigot flowing, Google reportedly considered buying Epic Games

By Scott Marlette Last updated Aug 7, 2021

Newly released court documents reveal that during their legal battle over the removal of the Fortnite app from the Google Play Store, Google gave serious thought to buying Epic

Games. As reported by The Verge, Epic claimed that Google was upset about its plan to offer Fortnite for Android through other options than the Play Store.

At the heart of the legal battle is the 30% cut of in-app revenue that Google receives from purchases made from the Play Store. By offering its popular game for Android users through other channels, Epic was taking money out of Google’s wallet.

According to Epic’s filing with the court, “Google’s actions force app developers and consumers into Google’s own monopolized “app store”—the Google Play Store. Google has thus installed itself as an unavoidable middleman for app developers who wish to reach Android users and vice versa. Google uses this monopoly power to impose a tax that siphons monopoly profits for itself every time an app developer transacts with a consumer for the sale of an app or in-app digital content.”

Epic adds that “Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to fence out competition, has developed a series of internal projects to address the “contagion” it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat.”

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney tweets that his company had no idea until now that Google considered buying his firm

A tweet posted by Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney states that Google never approached Epic with any kind of acquisition plan. The company did say that Google had offered it a “special deal” to include Fortnite in the Play Store, and another part of the filing mentions how a Google Play manager spoke with Epic about sideloading the game on Android although he called it an “abysmal” experience since it would require more than 15 steps to load the game on Android compared to only two needed to load it from the Play Store.

The complaint also included an interesting story about how OnePlus planned to add an exclusive Epic Games app to its phones allowing those with a OnePlus device to “seamlessly install and update Epic games, including Fortnite, without obstacles imposed by Google’s Android OS.” But when Google found out about this, it put its foot down and put the kibosh on the deal forcing OnePlus to scrap the arrangement.

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