Google considered buying Epic Games after the Fortnite controversy, and the reproaches return

The study after Unreal once again accuses Google of reinforcing its monopoly with bad practices.

The trial that faces Epic Games against Apple for Fortnite continues to leave us the most interesting information, because now it has been known that Google considered buying the parents of Fortnite once this controversy was unleashed, when Epic managed not to pay commissions for the sale of PaVos at Google and Apple. Situation that led to the withdrawal of the battle royale from the App Store and the aforementioned trial.

Epic accuses Google of using its influence to strengthen its monopoly“The conduct described shows that Google’s continued monopoly is the result of its own efforts to achieve and maintain it,” Epic says of the documents seen during the litigation. “Not content with the contractual and technical barriers they have carefully constructed to eliminate competition , Google uses their size, influence, power and money to induce third parties to sign anti-competition agreements that further entrench their monopoly.”

The authors of Fortnite charge against Google, which they say came to consider the actions of Epic Games as “a contagion” capable of endangering its stability as it “perceived the efforts of Epic and others to offer competitive alternatives to developers and consumers” . The head of Epic Games has not missed the opportunity to speak about this issue on social networks: “We did not know this at the time,” says Tim Sweeney; “Google is considering buying Epic to end our efforts to compete with Google Play.”

They try to buy Epic to end our efforts to compete with Google PlayTim sweeney“It is not clear if this would have been a negotiation to buy Epic or a hostile acquisition attempt”, continues the director of Epic Games, who does not forget either the problematic system to download Fortnite on Android devices directly from the Epic website: ” Google speaks of a ‘frankly lousy’ experience while publicly saying that Android is an ‘open platform’. ” That is, as described by Epic, “Google imposes on consumers who want a direct download of the game a ‘poor experience’ in which you have to take ‘more than 15 steps to get the app’, compared to the two steps that requires downloading the game on Google Play or iOS “.

While most of the spotlight has been on the dispute between Epic and Apple, we must not forget that just a few weeks ago the authors of Fortnite charged against Google claiming that Google Play is a business with a rotten soul .