Epic Games brought new charges against Google, alleging that the company made millions of dollars worth of deals with Activision Blizzard to stifle competition.
Google paid Activision Blizzard $360 million to not create its own app store. Alphabet Inc’s Google has reached agreements with at least 24 major app developers to prevent competition from competing with their Google Play store, including a three-year agreement to pay Activision Blizzard hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a report. Epic Games allegation.
According to the company, Google also agreed in 2020 to pay Tencent’s Riot Games unit $30 million for a year in a similar arrangement, the filing states.
Epic Games accuses Google in a new development.
Key details appear in a fresh, unedited copy of the Epic Games lawsuit presented in a court filing against Google in 2020. Content about alleged practices of unfair competition related to Android and Play Store business.
Google, Activision and Riot did not comment on the new profile information released by Epic Games. But Google has said that the lawsuit is baseless and has not paid attention to the actions taken by the maker of Unreal Engine.
Last year, Epic lost a similar lawsuit against Apple. Google’s agreements with the developer have been described in previous versions of the lawsuit, but the exact terms have not been disclosed.
The deal with Activision was announced in January 2020, shortly after it informed Google that it was considering launching its own app store. Google also during that time period forecast billions of dollars in lost app store sales if developers switched to alternative systems.
Epic’s lawsuit alleges that Google knew the signing with Activision “has ensured that Activision would abandon its plans to launch a competing app store, and that Google expected this outcome”. At the time, the Call of Duty maker also considered creating its own Android app store to launch exclusive mobile games on it.
A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that it has never sought to restrict any game company from launching competing app stores. The company added that Epic Games misinterpreted the business problems. These deals include agreements with Activision Blizzard and Riot Games as part of the Project Hug program to help developers give Google Play users early access to new games.
