Last year, the top game Fortnite of Epic Games has been withdrawn from the App Store by Apple and Google after developers released a new payment system that bypassed the payment systems and market commissions of large companies.
Shortly afterwards, Epic filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple and Google. The leaked court documents reveal that, before the antitrust lawsuits were filed, Google attempted to acquire Epic Games.
The court document was first released by The Verge and this is Epic Games' lawsuit against Google in the United States. Epic Games has a similar lawsuit against Google in Australia.
In the document [PDF], Epic claims that Google was threatened by its plans to bypass its official Google Play Store supply from its distribution Fortnite through other channels. To address these concerns, Google has reportedly considered buying "part or all of Epic Games" to get the developers out of the way.
Google went so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure their agreement to limit competition, and developed a series of internal projects to deal with the "contamination" it perceived from Epic and others' efforts to offer to consumers and developers competitive alternatives solutions. He even considered buying some or all of Epic to combat this threat,” Epic said in the court filing.
Google has also reportedly used conventional and technical barriers to make it difficult for users to download Epic Games applications to their devices. It used the exclusion of OEMs, such as OnePlus, from entering into agreements with Epic Games, effectively cutting off users' access to install and update Epic Games applications without using the Google Play Store.
In addition, Epic Games claims that it was offered a "special deal" by Google to release Fortnite in the Play Store as another measure to stop the company's sideloading efforts. When they made the offer, Google Play executives reportedly admitted that sideloading would be an "awful experience" and warned of the "15+ steps" users would have to take to install the Epic Games app if the company did not accept the agreement.
Epic Games rejected Google's special deal, opting to distribute Fortnite for Android over the webσελίδαof Epic and through a partnership with Samsung.
In addition to the legal battle with Epic Games, Google "won" another antitrust lawsuit last month from attorneys general of the USA in 36 states and Washington. As with the Epic Games lawsuits, the attorneys general allege that Android is far less open than Google claims, restricting third-party app stores and discouraging direct downloads of apps.
