Google also agreed in 2020 to pay Tencent Holdings's Riot
Games unit, which makes League of Legends, about $30 million over one year, the
filing stated.
The financial details emerged in a newly unredacted copy of
a lawsuit that Fortnite video game maker Epic Games first filed against Google
in 2020. It alleged anticompetitive practices related to the search giant's
Android and Play Store businesses.
Google has called the lawsuit baseless and full of
mischaracterisations. It said its deals to keep developers satisfied reflect
healthy competition.
Riot said it was reviewing the filing. Activision did not
respond to requests for comment.
Epic last year mostly lost a similar case against Apple, the
other leading app store provider. An appellate ruling in that case is expected
next year.
The Google agreements with developers are part of an
internal effort known as "Project Hug" and were described in earlier
versions of the lawsuit without the exact terms.
The remuneration includes payments for posting to YouTube
and credits toward Google ads and cloud services.
The deal with Activision was announced in January 2020, soon
after it told Google it was considering launching its own app store. Partnering
with Riot also intended to "stop their in-house 'app store' efforts,"
court papers say.
Google at the time forecast billions of dollars in lost app
store sales if developers fled to alternative systems.
Epic's lawsuit alleges that Google knew signing with
Activision "effectively ensured that (Activision) would abandon its plans
to launch a competing app store." The agreement increases prices and
lowers quality of service, the lawsuit added.
Among others that signed with Google, as of July, were
gamemakers Nintendo and Ubisoft Entertainment, meditation app Calm and
education app company Age of Learning, according to the court papers. © Reuters