SAN FRANCISCO — Video game maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive agreement” with Google that could end a five-year legal campaign against the Google Play Store for Android apps.
Epic and Google disclosed the settlement in a joint legal document they filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.
They said this would “allow the parties to put their disputes aside and make Android a more dynamic and competitive platform for users and developers.”
Epic, creator of the popular online game Fortnite, won victory over summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning Google's Android app store as illegal monopoly. The unanimous decision cleared the way for a federal judge to issue a potentially devastating shakeup designed to give consumers more choice.
The specific terms of the settlement remain secret and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies outlined some of their agreements in a joint document.
They said the settlement is closely related to Donato's October 2024 decision. tell Google to break down digital walls, protecting your Android app store from competitors. This included a provision that the app store would distribute competing third-party app stores so consumers could download them to their phones if they chose.
Google had hoped to overturn those changes through an appeal, but a decision handed down in July by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a legal blow to the tech giant that had been caught in three separate instances. antimonopoly processes touching on the various underpinnings of her internet empire.
Epic Games filed lawsuits against the Google Play Store as well as Apple's iPhone app store in 2020 in an attempt to circumvent exclusive payment processing systems that charge between 15% and 30% fees on in-app transactions. The settlement proposed Tuesday to call on Google to limit those payments to between 9% and 20%, depending on the transaction.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the agreement an “amazing offer” in a social media post. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
