Google offered $147 million to put 'Fortnite' on the Android Play Store, but Epic didn't accept it

According to news from this site on November 9, Google confirmed to the court that Epic had received an agreement worth US$147 million to put its popular game "Fortnite" on the Google Play Store.

Purnima Kochikar, vice president of partnerships at Google Play, said the agreement was approved and submitted to Epic, but not accepted.

According to this three-year (to 2021) "incremental funding" plan, Epic The amount will be received in phases. The agreement is designed to prevent popular apps from bypassing Google's cut.

In fact, Epic provided the Android version of "Fortnite" directly through the official website in 2018, thus avoiding the Play Store and eliminating the need to pay Google the commission required by the Play Store. In an antitrust lawsuit filed later in 2020, Epic said the decision briefly sent Google into panic.

Citing internal documents, it said that Google was worried that this approach might have "contagion risks", that is, it was afraid that other game developers (including Blizzard, Valve, Sony and Nintendo) would follow Epic's approach.

Epic also claims that Google tried to prevent this from happening by offering special benefits or even acquiring Epic.

Lawrence Koh, the departed head of Google Play games business development, testified in court on Tuesday that these "contagious" documents were submitted to the court.

Google believes that almost all leading game developers are considering withdrawing from the Play Store after seeing Epic’s move. This move may cause Google to lose billions of dollars in revenue.

Court documents predict that if "Fortnite" leads to a subsequent large-scale "evacuation", it may cause Google to suffer losses of 130 to 250 million US dollars (note on this site: currently about 946 to 1.82 billion yuan) Direct revenue loss may result in subsequent indirect losses of up to US$3.6 billion (currently approximately RMB 26.208 billion).

Google said it was just concerned about the loss of games on the Play Store and had no malicious intent. Koh said: "We just hope that developers choose Play," "We believe that getting games on this service is a worthwhile investment."

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