Epic: “Does Tencent control Epic?”
Sweeney: “No.”
“Who does?”
“I do. I’m the controlling shareholder of Epic.”
What about Tencent?
“I came up with the idea of Project Liberty, and when we disclosed to them, they were rather surprised.”
He says it’s converting at a “much lower rate than we’d estimate if we were on Google Play.”
Sweeney was absolutely brazen on the stand just minutes ago, looking a tad like a greedy exec, but he’s now Epic’s witness again.
Epic points out that Google never asked him how much Epic pays to put Fortnite on Windows or Apple computers.
“Microsoft gets nothing when we distribute Fortnite directly,” says Sweeney. How about Apple?
“Zero.”
“Mr. Sweeney, you testified that you’re not seeking damages, but your company would make hundreds of millions of dollars from the arrangement you see on this screen, right?” asked Google’s lawyer, pointing to a V-Bucks purchase screen where users see a higher price to use Google Play Billing.
“I think it would be billions of dollars!” Sweeney said.
Earlier:
The reason you would love that is because you can set both of these prices, and as long as you set the Google Play price even a little bit higher, more people will choose Epic direct payment, right? And when that happens, Google gets nothing, right?
“That’s right,” said Sweeney.
He said it would be “awesome!” if he could avoid paying Google anything.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney admits that V-Bucks in the Epic Games Store are more profitable than V-Bucks purchased on game consoles, since it charges the same $8.99 for 1,000 V-Bucks on each platform yet pays fewer fees on its own website.
Google tries to suggest that Sweeney’s just putting that money in his pocket, but he won’t go that far.
“We’re saving the part which is not paid to the payment processor, so 3 percent.”
You can read the conversation at #41 here in my cache of the best Epic v. Apple emails, but Google sees the tip-off as more than a curiosity — it’s asking if Epic briefed other console makers, too.
But while an Epic Project Liberty presentation slide does suggest that Epic would “pre-brief appropriate partners” two weeks before it sprung its trap, Sweeney says Epic simply prebriefed all the console partners on a reduced price for V-Bucks, not the whole #FreeFortnite campaign.
Google’s lawyer keeps saying “you KNEW” at the beginning of each question, as if Epic CEO Tim Sweeney hadn’t already admitted to premeditating the entire legal fight.
But just in case you’re nodding off in the jury box, like one juror I’m looking at right now who’s wearing a puffy black vest, perhaps his forceful tone will get your attention.
(Google may need to show these things in order to win its countersuit.)
Google is repeatedly asking Tim Sweeney if he understood the notice he got when Fortnite got rejected from the Play Store for the second time. We’re looking at it now:
your app continues to violate Payments policy, which generally prohibits games published on Google Play from providing a payment method other than Google Play Billing to purchase in-app virtual currency or in-app digital downloads.
“You understood from this email that Google’s payments policy prohibited you from using Epic Pay for purchases of V-Bucks, right?”
Sweeney says yes.
“You decided to sneak that version in, right?” Google’s lawyer Jonathan Kravis asks, referring to the hotfix.
“Yes that’s what we decided to do with Project Liberty,” Sweeney freely admits.
I got a laugh out of this whole conversation a couple years ago, and Google’s bringing it up again: you can read the original documents at #32 in my cache of the best emails from the Epic v. Apple trial.
The TL;DR: Tim Sweeney promised he wouldn’t give into pressure to put Fortnite on the Play Store, negotiated a special deal with Samsung for 12 percent, then went back on his word — and Samsung wasn’t happy.
Sweeney says Epic still does have a special deal with Samsung, though, to this very day.
Judge James Donato ordered that Google could bring up once and only once during the trial that Epic Games is partially owned by Tencent, a Chinese company, and not dwell on it. That just happened.
Kravis didn’t do much with it, simply adding it to a machine-gun list of yes/no questions including “Tencent is a Chinese company, right?” and “Tencent is a significant investor in Epic Games?” later suggesting out that Tencent signed a Project Hug deal as well.
I’m afraid I didn’t glance up at the jury in time to see if there was any reaction. They seem fairly comfortable and completely unreadable right now.