Google Considered Buying Epic Games In 2018, With Tencent’s Help

21.11.2023 - 15:35 / gameranx.com

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Google wanted to buy Epic Games.

But get this! It gets worse. As reported on TweakTown, Google was willing to partner with gaming giant multinational Tencent to make this happen.

The timing for this is also quite happening. Google was having internal talks about this in 2018, the same year that they launched their ill-fated streaming game platform, Stadia.

Google’s perceived threat against the video game establishment was serious enough that Sony and Microsoft talked about forming alliance between themselves, and Nintendo. The idea was that they were defending the status quo of video game consoles with AAA games, from the threat of streaming platforms like Stadia and Amazon’s Luna. They had also squeeze in Apple Arcade as a potential threat.

It certainly all sounds absurd to be talking about things like this, but do consider that at this time, Microsoft were themselves planning to acquire Zenimax and Activision Blizzard King. Sony were themselves a year away from acquiring Insomniac Studios, and they would also acquire Housemarque, Nixxes, Bluepoint, and Bungie after that.

So we should contextualize this newly revealed information. Google was planning such moves at a time when Sony and Microsoft were doing the same thing, and they would act on those plans in the following years. But now, let’s examine the details of this deal that never happened.

This idea came from no less than the head of Stadia, Phil Harrison. Harrison’s play was clear as day; Google would immediately benefit from the inclusion of Fortnite’s revenue. Harrison had a plan A and a plan B too. Plan A was to to work on this deal in alliance with Tencent, to fully own Epic and Fortnite.  Plan B was to get a 20 % stake in Epic, for the ringing number of $ 2 billion.

As for today, Tencent made their way in to acquire 40 % of Epic Games. Sony has a stake in Epic as well, valued at below 5 %. Epic themselves had made a major investment flub of their own, selling music publishing platform Bandcamp mere months after acquiring it.

As for Google? They gave up on Stadia, but it seems they are still looking at getting some kind of foothill into video games after all this time. Their current initiative involves turning YouTube itself into a gaming platform. And by this, we mean they are offering several games to stream on YouTube.