The Epic VS Google lawsuit is showing its fangs. A new document made public in the context of the case shows that the second paid Activision Blizzard nearly $360 million to prevent the studio from developing a system similar to the Google Play Store. In doing so, the publisher could indeed have lost a significant share of income to Alphabet, which collects a percentage of all in-game purchases to finance its online store. The App Store, at Apple, also works this way and has already worried the creator of Fortnite in relatively similar conditions.
According to a file whose content was reported to us by the press agency Reuters, Activision Blizzard is also not the only company to have had the right to a partnership of this kind with Google. Indeed, according to the same information, Nintendo, Ubisoft and Riot Games are also in the sights of the authorities. It could be that the actions of the various stakeholders are reprehensible in court, for agreement.
LoL in the loop
If we take the example of Riot Games, the company would have paid for its part approximately $30 million not to develop an alternative to the Google Play Store. Its founders did not comment on the case. However, we can imagine the staggering amount of “taxes” that Alphabet has thus guaranteed itself, knowing that League of Legends is one of the most downloaded titles in the world on Android. The album wild rift has already been installed more than ten million times on Mountain View mobiles, with an average rating of 4/5 for more than two million reviews at the time of writing these lines.
Riot Games also releases two other flagship games on the Google Play Store. It is, on the one hand, TFT: Teamfight Tactics and, on the other hand, Legends of Runeterra. And although there is actually no game library allowing sideloading, an app called Riot Mobile still allows you to manage your profile and compare your results in different games with your friends.
A very respectable deal, according to Activision
Finally, it was Activision Blizzard who spoke on the file, ensuring that them “allegations” from Epic are insane here. Did the group prefer to save the honor of its contract rather than compete with the giant of Sundar Pichai? To be continued…
