Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court

One month after Epic Games and Google seemingly stopped fighting over the future of Android app distribution, they were back in a San Francisco courtroom today — where Judge James Donato just ordered Google to make it easier to install rival app stores on Android.

It’s been nearly three years since a jury unanimously decided that Google had an illegal monopoly over Android apps, and almost two years since Judge Donato decided the best way of undoing that monopoly would be to crack open Android app distribution. Donato ordered Google to carry rival Android app stores inside its own Google Play Store, and to provide rivals with complete access to Google’s full catalog of apps, for several years.

Following the latest twist in Google’s legal battles with Epic, US Android users are now able to open Google’s Play Store and download a third-party digital store with its own selection of apps. Aptoide, a store specializing in mobile games, is the first to become available.

Third-party app stores have always been available on Android, which is a more open platform than iOS in that respect. However, until now they’ve only been available if pre-installed on a device — as with the Amazon Appstore on Fire tablets or Samsung’s Galaxy Store — or installed via sideloading. Listing rival storefronts within the Play Store makes them much easier for users to find and access.

Epic Games and Google have just jointly withdrawn their attempt to retroactively settle the lawsuit that’s changing how Android app stores work in the United States — and that means Google will be forced to carry rival app stores inside of its own. In fact, Google tells the court, it’s ready to begin carrying third-party app stores on Wednesday, July 22nd. Does that mean it’s time for Microsoft to launch an Xbox game store on Android?

In October 2024, Judge James Donato originally agreed that forcing Google to carry rival Android app stores within its own Google Play store for several years, and forcing it to share its own entire catalog of apps with those stores, would be the best way of undoing the company’s illegal monopoly over Android applications. Google has been fighting that ever since, and eventually convinced Epic to join in, by settling all their legal disputes around the world and making a secret $800 million deal along the way.

While the court still hasn’t signed off on the massive settlement resolving Epic’s antitrust lawsuit against Google for having a monopoly over Android’s app store with Google Play, the tech giant says it will start rolling out changes to the way it handles billing for developers worldwide. As announced in March, the flat 30 percent billing fee is being replaced by “lower, decoupled fees” that partially decouple the billing and the app store.

How much of a cut Google will take from transactions now depends on whether it’s for a user whose first install came before or after the new structure, how much a developer has earned, and whether or not the developer uses Google Play’s billing system with its 5 percent additional fee, instead of an alternative system or linking to their own website.

Microsoft first revealed it was building an Xbox mobile gaming store to take on Apple and Google all the way back in 2022. Former Xbox president Sarah Bond even went on stage at a Bloomberg event nearly two years ago and promised the store would launch in July, 2024. Now, it looks like Microsoft has put the project on hold.

Better xCloud developer redphx noticed that the store URL Microsoft had been testing for the past couple of years no longer works. It’s not clear exactly when it disappeared, but the last time the website was updated was nearly a year ago.

Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: “crooked,” “deceitful,” “insanely sneaky,” calling Android a “fake open platform,” calling both companies “gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with,” telling me how Google’s Project Hug was “an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale.”

But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It’s right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google.

Today, Google killed its 30 percent app store fee, partially uncoupled Google Play from Google Play Billing after they were declared an illegal monopoly in the US, and much more.

From July, depending on where you live, Google will now generally charge developers 20 percent for in-app purchases, or 10 percent for subscriptions — but it’s also carving out several new categories of app which might pay differently. One of them is the mysterious new “metaverse browsers” category, whose details have been redacted.

Epic Games and Google are burying the hatchet, but documents released today reveal that they aren’t only aligned on how Google is shaking things up for app stores. The two companies have also agreed to terms about a new class of apps that they’re calling “metaverse browsers,” according to a heavily redacted section of a revised binding term sheet.

While the term “metaverse” has largely fallen out of favor — Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is now much more interested in AI — Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has been talking for years about the metaverse and how it might work in the future. (Depending on how you define the concept, Epic’s Fortnite is already arguably one of the biggest versions of a metaverse.) And this actually isn’t the first time there has been a connection with Epic and Google about the metaverse; in court in January, when discussing a secret $800 million Unreal Engine and services deal, Sweeney blurted out that the agreement related to the metaverse.

In November, Epic and Google jointly proposed a settlement that would change Android’s fate globally without cracking open Google’s Android monopoly quite the way it otherwise might. Today, Google has decided it’s not waiting for that settlement to be approved: it’s moving forward with many of its proposed changes right now, rolling them out globally through 2027 — and we spoke to the heads of Android and Epic Games about the changes.

By June 30th, Google writes, it will lower most app store fees in the US, UK, and European Economic Area to 20 percent or less, down from 30 percent. By the end of the year, it will launch a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US, so that you can download and install third-party app stores (like the Epic Games Store) from the web without the friction that Google erected previously.