Today, Epic Games is one of the largest and most influential companies in the video game industry thanks to your Unreal Engine and the success of Fortnite, in addition to having an important participation of the Chinese giant Tencent, and Google tries its luck in the sector with Stadia, its bet on streaming game, but not long ago, the search engine company would have thought of buying Epic Games. At least, that’s what new documentation submitted in the judgment that pits Apple and Epic Games.
As we can read in The Verge, the information provided by Epic Games in the trial states that after Epic Games’ refusal to comply with the requirements of the Play Store and the availability of the game on Android through other means, Google considered the purchase “total or partial” of Epic Games to eliminate competition and the threat of losing part of your income. A monopoly charge that could bring big headaches to the owners of the most popular search engine on the net.
“Google’s persistent monopoly is the result of the company’s deliberate efforts to achieve and maintain it (the monopoly),” the car read. “Not content with the contractual and technical barriers that he has carefully constructed to eliminate competition, Google uses its size, influence, power and money to induce third parties to anticompetitive agreements that further entrench its monopolies. For example, Google has gone so far as to share its monopoly profits with business partners to secure its agreement to fence in the competition, has developed a number of internal projects to address the ‘contagion’ it perceived from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives, and has even contemplated buying part or all of Epic to quell this threat.
It’s unclear when this happened and if there was any actual attempt by Google to take over Epic Games maliciously, but it certainly won’t be the last dirty rag to come out during the Epic Games proceedings against Apple and Google. Another of the big companies splashed by the dispute is PlayStation, who rejected the Fortnite crossplay and requires a fee from developers who want to implement crossplay based on the percentage of players contributed by their platform.
