Alphabet’s Google has reached at most 24 agreements with major app developers in order to keep competitors from using the Play Store, including an agreement to pay Activision $360 Million (roughly the equivalent of Rs. 2,941 crore) over the course of three years, as per an application to the court on Thursday.
Google has also has agreed to pay in 2020 Tencent Holdings’ Riot Games unit, which is responsible for League of Legends around $30 million (roughly 245 crore rupees). 245 crore) over the course of a year, according to the filing.
The financial details were revealed in a new, unredacted copy of a lawsuit Fortnite video game developer Epic Games first filed against Google in the year 2020. The lawsuit alleged unfair practices in relation to the company’s Android as well as Play Store businesses.
Google said that the agreements it has made to keep developers happy are a sign of the healthy competition.
Riot announced that it was examining the file. Activision has not responded to inquiries for comment.
Epic last year, the company largely lost an identical case to Apple, another major app store company. A decision on appeal in this case is anticipated in the coming year.
Google Contract
These Google contracts with developers is part of an internally-run project called “Project Hug”. And were mentioned by the court in previous versions but not with specific terms.
The payment includes payments for uploading to YouTube and credit for Google ads as well as cloud services.
The partnership with Activision was made public in January 2020 just after. It had informed Google that it was looking at opening their own store for apps. The partnership with Riot also was a way in order to “stop their in-house ‘app store’ efforts,” the court documents state.
Google in the past estimated billions of dollars of lost sales from apps in the event. That developers switched to other platforms.
Epic’s lawsuit asserts that Google knew that signing the agreement in partnership with Activision “effectively ensured that (Activision) would abandon its plans to launch a competing app store.” The deal increases prices and decreases the quality of the service, according to the lawsuit.
The other companies who signed with Google in July. Were the game companies Nintendo and Ubisoft Entertainment, Calm, a meditation app, and the educational app developer Age of Learning. According to court documents.
