We’re looking at a slide showing all the places you can buy V-Bucks: Epic’s website, consoles, PCs, physical retail, the sideloaded app, and the Samsung Galaxy Store.
Sweeney admits that if you buy your V-Bucks anywhere else, then use them in Fortnite on Android, Google doesn’t make money.
Sweeney agrees.
Google’s Kravis particularly incisive question might make Sweeney look like he’s trying to have it both ways. Fortnite is a freemium game, Google is pointing out — meaning most of its players are subsidized by a smaller number of paying customers.
But that’s also how Google Play works as an app store, and how Google has been justifying its 30 percent fee (and, if we go meta, how Epic is likely funding this whole legal battle, since its PlayStation riches probably subsidize its Android and Apple legal fees.)
Kravis is taking a while to get around to this point, but we’re moving down that road — he just asked Sweeney how much it costs Epic to create the “V-Bucks” it sells players.
Google lawyer Jonathan Kravis has a slideshow ready and waiting and is asking Epic CEO Tim Sweeney the same basic question four ways: does Sony charge 30 percent? Does Microsoft charge 30 percent? Does Nintendo charge 30 percent? Does Apple? Do any of them allow sideloading or app stores?
Sweeney agrees, all of them charge 30 percent. None of them allow sideloading or app stores — save Android.
“Epic still makes plenty of money on consoles, right?” asks Kravis.
Epic is currently losing money, Sweeney claims — but Kravis says Epic earned $12 billion across Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo platforms.
Sweeney reiterates that Epic is not seeking any money from Google — he just wants to expand the business. He says that while Epic has been damaged by Google because it can’t meaningfully distribute Fortnite on phones, Epic isn’t seeking any damages — it just wants the court to make Google stop enforcing its policies.
Now, it’s Google’s turn to question him.
Tim Sweeney himself doesn’t seem to have lied under oath, but the question from Epic’s lawyer was remarkable: “Did you ever let Google know you were going down this road?”
Sweeney says that about 15 minutes after Epic released the hotfix that injected its own payments platform into the Fortnite app on Android, he sent an email to Google senior executives and “asked them to reconsider their payment policies.”
After, not before.
Here’s part of a longer email that Tim Sweeney sent to Google top brass on June 30th, 2020:
Dear Sundar, Hiroshi, Jamie, Don:
We would like to offer consumers the following features:
1) Competing payment processing options other than google play payments, without Google’s fees, in Fortnite and other epic games software distributed through Google Play;
2) A competing Epic Games Store app available through Google Play and/or through direct installation that has equal access to underlying operating system features for software installation and update as Google Play itself has, including the ability to install and update software without Google warning screens which discourage users from using third-party stores.
Sweeney says the whole challenge to Google and Apple was his idea and claims he was asking on behalf of the entire Android developer ecosystem.
Should Google agree to Epic’s demands, he says, “We didn’t want a special deal for ourselves... we wanted everyone to have the option of distributing through Android as we had distributing through Android.”
What demands, you ask? Check my very next update to this StoryStream and you’ll see.
Epic’s lawyers have already suggested it was an act of standing up to a bully, and now Sweeney’s explaining it pretty matter-of-factly. “We were about to challenge two of the most powerful companies in history.”
Sweeney says he hired his legal team — the one representing Epic today — right from the beginning of Project Liberty.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on why Epic gave up and decided to submit Fortnite to Google Play again after initially skipping Google’s app store.
He says Epic realized that “most users were severely deterred from installing Fortnite” by Google.
But when Epic submitted Fortnite to the Play Store, it contained Epic’s own payment system — and was repeatedly rejected for doing so. Google has shown that Epic agreed to add Play Billing afterward.
It’s known as a man-in-the-disk vulnerability, it’s complicated, but the idea is if a user downloaded Fortnite from the Samsung Galaxy Store, then went somewhere else and installed malware from a webpage, that malware could modify some of the files Fortnite had installed and use that to escalate its privileges to become more malware-y.
He says the bug was only ever on the Samsung Galaxy version of Fortnite, was fixed within two days, and says he’s unaware if anyone was ever harmed by the vulnerability.