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Google Thought of Buying Tencent’s Epic Stake in Swipe at Fortnite, Says Game Maker

  • Game maker says it rejected 2018 ‘special deal’ with Google
  • Alphabet unit is fighting claims its app store abused power
Boxes of court documents outside the U.S. district court in Oakland before an Epic-Apple trial in May.
Boxes of court documents outside the U.S. district court in Oakland before an Epic-Apple trial in May.Photographer: Nina Riggio/Bloomberg
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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 characterizes 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 Thursday on orders from a judge.