Google Made A $360 Million Activision Deal To Block Rival App Store!

Google Made A $360 Million Activision Deal To Block Rival App Store! According to a court document filed on Thursday, Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL.O) Google has reached at least 24 agreements with major app developers to prevent them from competing with its Play Store.

One of these agreements calls for paying Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) about $360 million over three years. According to the document, Google also agreed to pay Riot Games, a division of Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700. HK), which develops “League of Legends,” roughly $30 million over a year beginning in 2020.

The financial information was revealed in a recently released, unedited version of a lawsuit Epic Games, the creator of “Fortnite,” first brought against Google in 2020. It accused the search engine giant of engaging in anticompetitive behaviour in its Android and Play Store operations.

According to Google, the complaint is unfounded and full of false statements. It said that its agreements with developers reflect healthy competition. Activision claimed that it never signed a contract with Google prohibiting the launch of an app store.

Activision stated that Google “never approached us, pressed us, or forced us to agree not to compete with Google Play.” “Epic’s accusations are absurd,” The riot claimed to be studying the filing.

In a battle against Apple Inc. (AAPL.O), the other major app store operator, Epic mainly lost last year. Next year, an appellate decision, in that case, is anticipated. The agreements that Google has with developers are a part of an internal initiative called “Project Hug,” and they were mentioned in prior iterations of the complaint without being specified in detail.

The compensation consists of cash for YouTube uploads as well as credits for Google adverts and cloud services. Soon after Activision informed Google that it was thinking about opening its app store, the arrangement with Activision was made public in January 2020.

Epic is accusing Activision Blizzard’s partner Google of paying us not to compete with them.

To be clear: that’s false.

Google never asked us, pressured us, or made us agree not to compete with them – and we’ve already submitted documents and testimony disproving this nonsense.

— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) November 17, 2022

Working with Riot was also intended to “halt their internal ‘app store’ efforts,” according to court documents. At the time, Google predicted that if developers switched to rival platforms, the app store would lose billions of dollars in sales.

According to the lawsuit by Epic, Google was aware that partnering with Activision “essentially assured that (Activision) would abandon its ambitions to build a competing app store.” The lawsuit also claimed that the arrangement reduces service quality while raising pricing.

According to court documents, game developers Nintendo Co (7974.T) and Ubisoft Entertainment SA (UBIP.PA), meditation app Calm, and education app provider Age of Learning were among those who had agreements with Google as of July.

Epic Says Google Paid Activision Millions Not To Launch Rival App Store https://t.co/zwNJoKEkKe

— Slashdot (@slashdot) November 19, 2022

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