Google offered Epic Games $147 mn to launch Fortnite on Play store

San Francisco, Nov 9

Google offered a $147 million deal to game developer Epic Games to launch its popular game Fortnite on Google Play store, the tech giant has told the court.

Purnima Kochikar, Vice President, Play Partnerships at Google, said in her testimony that the deal was approved and presented to Epic but not accepted, reports The Verge.

The deal would have seen the money dispensed over a three-year period of “incremental funding” (ending in 2021) to Epic.

In a document justifying the deal, Google wrote that “Fortnite’s absence could result in $130 million (up to $250 million) direct revenue loss with Play” and that there could be a “downstream impact of $550 million (up to $3.6 billion) potential revenue loss if broad contagion to other developers”.

“We just wanted developers to choose Play,” Kochikar said in the testimony.

The Epic vs Google trial began on Monday.

Google defended its 30 per cent cut on transactions for apps via its Play store.

According to The Verge, Google attorney Glenn Pomerantz described the 30 per cent share as "a market fee, not a monopoly fee."

"The service fee you see here is exactly the same fee that Epic pays in the Nintendo store, the Xbox store, the Steam store," he said in the court.

"All these stores charge a mega developer like Epic the same 30 per cent fee." Steve Allison, head of the Epic Games Store, disputed that 30 per cent is the standard.

The lawsuit was filed after Google pulled Fortnite from the Play store.

Epic is arguing that Google's monopolistic control on its Google Play Store for Android smartphones violates both state and federal antitrust laws.