Sean Hollister

In a document justifying the deal, Google wrote that “Fortnite’s absence could result in $130M (up to $250M) direct revenue loss with Play” and that there could be a “downstream impact of $550M (up to $3.6B) potential revenue loss if broad contagion to other developers.” But Epic said no.

Another argument that Epic’s lawyer didn’t highlight but I spotted below: “the [Play] store will still attract billions of users who will search for Fortnite and run into deadends that aren’t clear how to resolve.”

I wonder if Google wound up making the latter argument!

She wasn’t just talking about how many steps it took to sideload apps. In the same email, she wrote that “the user experience, and the security risks that come with it, is giving us some real concern.”

But she also admitted in an old deposition that the steps were definitely part of it — and that even a big company like Amazon would have trouble distributing their apps outside Google Play.

The context: Google was prepping to convince Epic to launch Fortnite on Google Play instead of as a sideloaded APK.

But we’re now looking at a painfully slow walkthrough of how many steps it took (in 2015) to sideload an app on a phone — far longer than it takes a user to actually do this themselves.

I wonder if Google will pull out a phone and show literally just how fast it goes. Still, I admit the sideloading process includes some scary warnings.

The BLANK rate on the page is that rate, right? Yes, says Kochikar.

There would be an adjustment to that number, right? “Spotify’s number would be adjusted up or down to reflect Google’s actual costs, right?” Yes.

Oh, but this part is going somewhere: “A games developer does not have the option to use its own payment system, correct?” Yes, except in Korea, she says.

Ah well, we tried.

The jury is now getting passed pieces of paper with the numbers on them.

“Of course, as we noted, at a reduction of 5%, we don’t think this solves the problems of any devs who are complaining about price,” reads another line from the same document.

Why? “A key element of this optionality proposal is we don’t want to give any artificial reasons to incent devs to switch off Play Billing.”

Excepting any sweetheart deals, Google wound up launching User Choice Billing at a 4 percent reduction, not even 5 percent. And in an old deposition, Kochikar admitted that devs wound up paying the same effective service fee in the end — apparently because they still have to pay an alternative payment processor in addition to Google’s rate.

In another, she wrote that Google’s “value exchange models support the hypothesis that custom deals” like Project Hug would be enough to satisfy developers. It sounded like she was in favor of a “policy change without a public change to the business model.”

Kochikar keeps trying to suggest it’s more complicated than this, that Google looked at multiple factors beyond those “value exchange models,” but Epic lawyer John Hueston is reminding her to just answer the questions.

“That was the default.”

“And you didn’t take any steps to change deletion settings for your chat software, correct?”

“Yes.”

“We have seen a decline in payers but an offsetting increase in ARPPU due to the removal of one-day subscriptions and alternative payment methods.”

Watts was also asked if he thought it was a pro-consumer change that Google notified subscribers that uninstalling the app didn’t cancel their subscriptions. He said yes.

We’re moving on to Purnima Kochikar, VP of Google Play Partnerships and formerly Director of Apps and Games.