Sean Hollister

But the company’s Project Liberty never targeted Samsung, Weissinger just admitted on the stand — after also admitting that, yes, Samsung does things that the Coalition for App Fairness rejects.

“You do not believe that Samsung abides by the principles for app fairness that are on your coalition’s website?” asked Google’s attorney.

“I agree with your statement,” he replied.

“Epic has a special deal with Samsung Galaxy, correct?” Correct.

“Epic chose not to focus Project Liberty on Samsung, correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct,” said Weissinger.

Epic’s attorney got a chance to redirect, and Weissinger started off weak, suggesting that Samsung are “exceptional promotional partners that really go above and beyond.”

Epic attorney Moskowitz tried again. “Does Samsung have the same reach and control and power as Google?”

“No it does not,” said Weissinger.

Weissinger just did that today on the stand. “Yes, it was our idea,” he said, confirming that Epic paid a consultant $100,000 to start the lobbying group, and that there were no other founding members.

In 2020, the “Coalition” told press that Epic Games, Spotify, Basecamp, Match Group, Tile, Blix, and Deezer were all “founding members” of the organization, but Google just asked if any of them were indeed founding members.

“If you’re referring to the incorporation, no they were not,” said Weissinger.

Here’s how my request for comment went in 2021, in case you’re curious:

Epic estimated that 37 percent of users gave up between “Clicked Download on Web” and opening the Epic Games app — but 40 percent dropped off after opening the Epic Games app and before passing a minimum spec check.

Weissinger says 40 percent is not bigger than 37 percent “in terms of absolute players,” suggesting more players were dissuaded by the former, but had to admit that 40 is bigger than 37 “as a number.”

Update: Weissinger has now explained that the 40 percent was of the remaining players after 37 percent of those attempting to download had already been dissuaded.

Only 260M phones met Fortnite’s minimum system requirements, compared to billions for competitors, the document showed.

“Download and Patching Process remains a challenge on mobile due to Fortnite Download Size relative to competitors,” reads another line from Epic’s document, showing that Fortnite’s first download took over 14 minutes, compared to under a minute for PUBG and Call of Duty: Mobile.

In a February 2020 internal document, Epic wrote that “mobile drives new accounts,” with 38 percent of daily new accounts in 2019 coming from a mobile platform.

But it also wrote that “mobile retention is low compared to other platforms,” with iOS retaining just 6 percent of players and Android retaining just 4 percent after the 30-day mark, compared to 16 percent on PS4, 11 percent on Xbox One, and 21 percent on Nintendo Switch.

And as we’ve already covered, players weren’t buying their V-Bucks on Android but, rather, on console. Just 0.7 percent of purchases were on Android as of 2018. Players who were introduced to Fortnite on PS4 bought 94.2 percent of their V-Bucks on PS4, but only 21.6 percent of those who started with Android bought their V-Bucks there. (34.8 percent of them bought them on PS4. Over 5 percent bought them on iOS.)

These all predate Fortnite’s launch on the Play Store — they’d have been from the sideloading days.

Google has just asked about Fortnite’s low retention of players on mobile — a point I myself brought up the other day.

Google did wind up doing the revenue sharing arrangements with RSA 3.0. Wouldn’t companies have to factor in this lost revenue share before preloading another store? asked Epic. “Yes, another app store would have to compete on a similar basis,” said Gennai.

We’re going to lunch now.

Within that document, there’s a list of what “Google Gets” and what “Samsung Gets” for each of the proposed items.

One of those proposed items was “Samsung Zone in Play replaces Galaxy Store.”

The “Google Gets” field reads: “No Galaxy Store.”

The “Samsung Gets” field reads: “Stop wasting resources on Galaxy Store.”

Epic’s attorney summed up: so, there was an offer for Google to pay Samsung $50 million a year to close the Galaxy Store?

Gennai said he didn’t recall it like that. “I recall it being a separate storefront that would use Google Play infrastructure.”

When he pointed out that most companies in Hug deals “continue to pay the published rate,” though, Epic leapt at that.

“Yes, exactly, they just got millions and millions of dollars on the side.”

Gennai protested that those companies work with Google.

“To the tune of millions of dollars in cash and prizes,” asserted Moskowitz.

“I don’t know the numbers,” replied Gennai.

Epic’s lawyer is asking a variety of questions about various passages, but the most compelling ones were these:

Was “contagion” the driver behind Project Hug?

“Yes, we did not want the loss of titles from Google Play to start a chain reaction of more and more titles on Google Play leaving.”

Was Google worried about losing them to other competing app distribution mechanisms on Android?

“They could just leave Android entirely and keep focusing on iOS.”

Would a developer like Activision Blizzard King just up and abandon Android’s billions of users?

“They can use it as a threat. We didn’t see it,” says Gennai.