According to a report, Google wanted to buy itself out of the trouble with Fortnite and Epic Games. According to court documents that have now been discovered, the online giant simply wanted to swallow the game provider to avoid further stress.
This is reported by The Verge. Accordingly, Google considered buying Epic Games for a while when the companies argued over Epic’s Fortnite Android app. This way of dispute settlement was considered by Google at the time as a quick remedy, as can be seen from recently unsealed court documents. These details were initially blacked out in an antitrust complaint by Epic against Google and have now been made public.
There are other interesting insights into the application. According to The Verge, it contains details of Google’s dealings with certain companies. Epic claims that Google has made offers to other developers to re-split profits individually through the Play Store, just so they don’t churn or try to raise money with other platforms.
This thwarted all efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives. During these negotiations, Google would have considered buying all or part of Epic in order to suppress this “threat to Google’s monopoly position”.
Epic claims that Google also offered them a “special deal” to bring Fortnite to the Play Store. Another section of the complaint describes how a Google Play manager approached Epic about his plans to sideload Fortnite – apparently saying that sideloading was a “frankly miserable” experience: the one associated with direct downloading “Installation difficulties” is not only a bad experience for the users, it was said, but also drastically limit the range of Epic, which could not be in the interests of the playmakers.
This was primarily intended to put pressure on Epic. However, Google and Epic did not negotiate a takeover. Epic boss Tim Sweeney only found out about the plans through the court. The documents also show that Epic Games’ business continues to do poorly. For the 2021 financial year, there is a loss of around 139 million US dollars. Epic Games does not expect to be in the black until 2027.
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