Epic Vs. Google Trial Unearths Activision Blizzard’s Failed Attempt At A Mobile Storefront
Epic Games ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Google has unearthed some pretty interesting information about the power play that’s afoot in the video game industry. Those include Google’s plans to acquire Epic. Epic’s plans to take Sony to court if it didn’t allow crossplay, and more recently, Activision Blizzard’s plans to launch their own mobile storefront.
Activision Blizzard’s top brass had apparently been pitching a mobile distribution platform of its own, codenamed Project Boston. The plan was to either run the “Steam of mobile” platform themselves or partner with Epic Games and Supercell. To entice developers to get with the program, Activision Blizzard was planning to take a mere 10%-12% cut from all app revenue which would have been significantly lower than the 30% commission that Apple and Google took from app sales.
According to the documents revealed during the trial, the ultimate goal was to create a distribution platform that would house all of Activision Blizzard’s mobile titles and potentially other third-party apps as well.
Other documents also revealed Activision Blizzard’s plans to enter into a $100 million partnership with Google to help boost the company’s performance and visibility on mobile, YouTube, cloud services, and advertising. Should the deal go through, Activision Blizzard planned to abandon Project Boston and its proposed partnership with Epic.
The aforementioned deal was inked in January 2020 which saw “billions of dollars” flow between both parties and the subsequent dropping of Project Boston.
Epic’s lawyers leveraged that deal during the last trial hearing as evidence that Google was willing to go to extreme lengths to thwart any potential competition. Google’s lawyers, however, countered that Activision Blizzard only pitched Project Boston to put pressure on Google during the negotiations. Activision Blizzard was quick to deny the allegations, saying that they were merely exploring the potential of the mobile storefront and that it was scrapped because it wasn’t financially viable.
