According to the latest reports, the recent antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games against Google, Google quietly paid hundreds of millions of dollars to game developers to encourage them to keep their games in the Play Store. This project was called Project Hug-later called Apps and Games Velocity Program.
In 2018, when Fortnite was first released for the Android platform, Epic Games took an unusual move and released the game exclusively outside of the Google Play Store. Instead, players must download and install directly from Epic’s website, so that the company can bypass Google’s 30% fee-but this comes at the cost of a user-friendly interface.
Epic Games finally released Fortnite on the Play Store in April 2020. But later Google removed it again because Epic added a feature that allows players to bypass Google fees when making in-app purchases, which has led to a series of lawsuits.
But Epic’s complaint stated that Google was worried that other developers would follow the example of Fortnite and spin it out of the lucrative business, so it launched a project called Project Hug to ensure that developers insist on using the Play Store.
According to the complaint, a report prepared by the Google Play finance team in 2019 stated that Epic may reach an agreement with Samsung and other OEMs to pre-install its competitors’ stores, win developers’ support by promising a lower revenue share and provide support for Android. Users turn to other shops to pave the way.
Overall, the team estimates that by 2022, the Epic Games Store on the Android platform may lose between 350 million and 1.4 billion US dollars. If other app stores, such as Amazon or Samsung, get fully developed” with Epic, these losses may increase from US$1.1 billion to US$6 billion.
Android executives pointed out in internal documents that Project Hug is to limit Epic’s influence. It is a hug plan for developers to express their love to them or a project to inject more love into top developers and games/ Propaganda surge plan.
In practice, a more practical statement is to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in secret transactions with more than 20 top developers. Google believes that these developers are most likely to be infected by Epic.
Google’s documents point out that although many target developers have inquired about revenue sharing or considered their own distribution platform, Project Hug has achieved great success. By the end of 2020, Google has signed agreements with most of the target companies of Project Hug-the most famous of which is Activision Blizzard-in order to keep these companies in the Play Store.
Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in a statement to The Verge: Google Play competes with other app stores on Android devices and rival operating systems to gain the attention and business of developers. We have been supporting it for a long time. First-class developers help them gain more users on Google Play by enhancing resources and investment. These projects are a sign of healthy competition between the operating system and the app store and bring huge benefits to developers.
