Google at one point considered buying Epic Games as a means to “squelch” the game company’s attempts to circumvent the Android Play Store, according to newly unsealed court documents.
First reported by The Verge, Epic quotes internal Google correspondence which calls Epic’s plans to get around Google’s Play Store commission a “contagion” threatening the tech giant.
Epic says, "Google’s persistent monopoly is the result of deliberate efforts by Google to achieve and maintain it." Epic accuses Google of using "its size, influence, power, and money to induce third parties into anticompetitive agreements that further entrench its monopolies."
To prevent Epic from circumventing Google's alleged monopoly, the gaming company says that Google "has even contemplated buying some or all of Epic to squelch this threat.”
Details regarding Google’s internal discussions on the matter remain secret, and no indication has been made that Google at any point contacted Epic with such an offer to buy out the company. Epic Games co-founder and CEO Tim Sweeney reiterated this on Friday.
“This was unbeknownst to us at the time, and because of the court’s protective order we’re just finding out now about Google’s consideration of buying Epic to shut down our efforts to compete with Google Play,” Sweeney tweeted Friday morning.
Epic also alleged in court filings that a Google Play manager previously reached out to Epic and said that the experience of downloading Fortnite onto an Android phone without the Google Play Store (referred to as “sideloading,” which typically comes with a security warning) is “abysmal.”
“One manager contacted Epic’s Vice President and Co-Founder to gauge Epic’s interest in a special deal and, among other things, discussed ‘the experience of getting Fortnite on Android’ via direct downloading," Epic states. "The manager’s call notes state that she viewed direct downloading Fortnite as “frankly abysmal” and “an awful experience”, and that Epic should ‘worry that most will not go through the 15+ steps.’”
Epic also alleges that Google understands from its internal data that the “install friction” associated with sideloading will “drastically limit [Epic’s] reach.”
“The [internal] document goes on to explain that “[f]uture [Fortnite] updates will be challenged re: targeting, update experience via web”; that the direct downloading approach was “most associated with malicious apps”, which would be “incompatible with [Epic’s] brand/demographics”; and that “[t]he approach will create significant user confusion, since [Google Play] will still attract [billions] of users who will search for Fortnite and run into dead ends that aren’t clear how to resolve," Epic states.
Epic Games launched lawsuits against Google and Apple in mid-2020, alleging both companies practiced “anti-competitive” behavior on their respective app stores.
Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.