Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says Google offered "what seemed like a crooked" deal to release Fortnite on Play Store
While admitting he intended to break rules of the platform's payment system.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has claimed Google offered him what "seemed like a crooked arrangement" in order to persuade the company to release Fortnite in the Google Play Store rather than through its own website.
Sweeney made the statement when he took to the witness stand yesterday in the ongoing trial between Epic and Google.
As reported by AP, Sweeney described a meeting between himself and Google at the latter's headquarters to discuss an agreement which would see Epic release Fortnite on the Play Store. "It seemed like a crooked arrangement," Sweeney said. "Google was proposing a series of side deals which seemed designed to convince Epic not to compete against them," he continued.
Sweeney refused Google's offers and Epic released Fortnite on Android in 2018 via an installer which had to be downloaded from its own website. In 2020, Epic finally released Fortnite on the Play Store, before attempting to circumvent platform fees on Android and iOS by secretly implementing its own payment system.
The tactic, called Project Liberty internally, was an intentional breach of Google's payments policy. At the beginning of the trial, Epic said it had come up with Project Liberty because it "decided to stand up because that's what you do to a bully", as reported by The Verge. During cross-examination from Google's lawyer, Sweeney admitted Epic knew its plan would violate Google Play's policies as that was what it intended.
Earlier this week, court documents from Epic vs Google revealed Google considered partnering with Tencent to gain ownership or a control stake in the Fortnite maker, in the hopes of using it as a "leading business driver".