Google thought of buying Tencent’s Epic stake in swipe at Fortnite, says game maker

Epic alleges the Tencent plan was hatched in a 2018 meeting of Google executives, according to an unredacted version of Epic’s lawsuit against Google that was made public on Aug 19 on orders from a judge. — Dreamstime/TNS

Epic Games Inc says Google went as far as to explore buying Tencent Holdings’ stake in the game maker to stop it from launching its Fortnite game app on Android by bypassing the Google Play store.

Epic’s year-old lawsuit against the Alphabet Inc unit characterises Google as perceiving the closely held game maker to be a threat to its app store. Epic alleges the Tencent plan was hatched in a 2018 meeting of Google executives, according to an unredacted version of Epic’s lawsuit against Google that was made public on Aug 19 on orders from a judge.