Google had discussions with the giant Chinese game company, Tencent, to buy Epic Games. The goal is to get more control from the Fortnite developer.
This information is leaked, from a number of court documents containing Epic complaints, regarding their antitrust dispute with Google. This is also based, because Epic may not accept this offer from Larry Page and Sergey Brin's company.
"As a more potential alternative, a senior Google executive suggested that they consider approaching Tencent. As it is known, this Chinese game company, has a partial stake in Epic," the complaint reads.
As one of the largest game developers and publishers in the world, they owned 40% of Epic in 2012. The rest of the company is fully controlled by Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder of Epic.
"Google's goal of inviting Tencent is to buy its shares from Tencent to gain more control. Second, to merge with Tencent, to buy all of Epic's shares," wrote Epic's complaint.
In addition, the document also explains the cooperation between Apple and Google that took place in 2018. The discussion is about Google Search as the default search engine in Safari for iPhone.
Then Apple representatives, suggested to senior members of Google to work together, to fight Epic. In which he said, the game developer's efforts, weakened mobile application store commission rates and restrictions on alternative application stores.
In its complaint, Epic also revealed other important information that touched on Project Hug. An initiative designed for publishers on the Google Play Store.
"Then there's Google's Project Hug secret, to pay publishers not to compete with Google Play, through a 5% discount on store fees," Sweeney wrote in a Twitter post.
With bribes, they influence Android app designers and game developers not to leave the Play Store. Due to emerging calculations, Google risks losing up to USD 6 billion in revenue, if many developers follow Epic and leave the Play Store.