Fortnite maker Epic Games has reached a “comprehensive settlement” with Google that could end its five-year legal crusade targeting Google’s Play Store for Android apps, the two companies revealed in a joint legal filing.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney called the deal an “incredible proposal” in a social media post.
Google and Epic Games said the deal would “allow the parties to put aside their disputes while making Android a more vibrant and competitive platform for users and developers,” according to the document filed Tuesday in federal court in San Francisco.
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Epic, which makes the hit online game Fortnite, scored a victory over Google in the summer when a federal appeals court upheld a jury verdict condemning the Android app store as an illegal monopoly. The unanimous ruling cleared the way for a federal judge to implement a potentially disruptive restructuring designed to give consumers more choices.
The specific terms of the settlement agreement remain sealed and must be approved by U.S. District Judge James Donato, but the two companies outlined some of their agreements in general terms in their joint filing. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
They said the deal closely follows Donato’s October 2024 ruling that ordered Google to tear down the digital walls that protect its Android app store from competition. That included a provision that will require its app store to distribute rival third-party app stores so that consumers can download them to their phones if they choose.
Google had hoped to overturn those changes with an appeal, but the ruling in July by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a legal blow to the technology company, which has been assaulted in three separate antitrust lawsuits affecting different pillars of its Internet empire.
Epic Games filed lawsuits targeting Google’s Play Store and Apple’s iPhone App Store in 2020 in an attempt to bypass proprietary payment processing systems that charged fees of 15% to 30% on in-app transactions. The deal proposed Tuesday requires Google to limit those payments to between 9% and 20%, depending on the transaction.
