By Natalie DeCoste

The gaming industry is highly competitive and extremely profitable, facts that have become more evident this past year as Epic Games took some of the biggest companies in the world to court. While the clash between Epic and Apple took center stage, consumers now have a behind-the-scenes look at Epic’s legal battle with Google.

Last Thursday, Judge James Donato unsealed a fully unredacted version of Epic’s original antitrust complaint against Google.

Epic’s complaint against Google is very similar to its one against Apple. Epic accused Google of illegally maintaining a monopoly on its Android devices, specifically in the company’s Play Store, in a way that imposes a tax on any app trying to get onto Android devices.

“This case is about doing the right thing in one important area, the Android mobile ecosystem, where Google unlawfully maintains monopolies in multiple related markets and engages in unlawful restraints of trade, denying consumers the freedom to enjoy their mobile devices—freedom that Google always promised Android users would have,” read the complaint.

The new, unredacted version helps to better shed light on the depth of Google’s actions to maintain the status quo on its app stores. The complaint alleges the company was so worried about Epic setting a precedent by abandoning the Play Store that it undertook a broad effort to prevent developers from following the company’s lead.

One of the measures that Google undertook was paying top game developers, such as Activision Blizzard, to stay with the Play Store. Google called its efforts “Project Hug,” now referred to as the Game Velocity Program, and “Project Banyan.” The move had Google share additional chunks of its revenue with phone makers if they agreed not to preinstall any other app stores.

“Documents discussing Google’s “Project Banyan” demonstrate how Google attempted to negotiate a deal with Samsung that would prevent the Galaxy Store from becoming a competitive threat and impose Google’s anti-competitive Google Play Billing tie on apps distributed by Samsung… Google planned to make annual payments to Samsung of “up to $60M, which was Google’s top-end estimate of the “current . . . operating profit of [the] Galaxy Store” but a small fraction of the “likely 2022 margin risk to Play,’” explained the complaint.

Google also created a Premier Device program to incentivize exclusivity. For companies such as LG and Motorola, Google also agreed to pay between 3-6% of “Play spend” incurred on Premier devices, the money from the Play Store. These companies also received 12% of search revenue generated by their users. With the payouts, Google ensured exclusivity on its Androids and prevented the phone developers from having apps with the ability to install other apps.

“In a presentation prepared by and presented to senior Google Play executives, Google noted that in the short time since the beginning of the program, over 200 million new devices were covered. The same presentation shows that Google believed that the new RSAs successfully eliminated the “risk of app developer contagion,” noting that there was “no risk” under the “Current Premier tier,’” the complaint said about the Premier Device program.

Google went as far as considering buying Epic to stop any hemorrhaging from its Play Store.

“A senior Google executive proposed that Google “consider approaching Tencent,” a company that owns a minority stake in Epic, “to either (a) buy Epic shares from Tencent to get more control over Epic,” or “(b) join up with Tencent to buy 100% of Epic,’” read the complaint.

The unredacted complaint helps paint a picture of Google that rivals Apple’s, a massive organization willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain its dominance and build a walled garden.