Epic Games and Google finally reach settlement after five-year-long legal standoff
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Key points
- Epic Games and Google have filed a proposed set of changes to Android and Google Play that focus on lowering fees and more.
- The changes resolving the litigation between the companies are awaiting the judge’s approval on Nov. 6, 2025.
- Epic Games and Google’s longstanding legal fight began in August 2020, along with the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple.
Epic Games and Google have filed a proposed set of changes to Android and Google Play that focus on lowering fees and expanding developer choice and flexibility.
The announcement came via post on X (formerly Twitter) on Nov 5, 2025, from the President of the Android ecosystem at Google, Sameer Samat, who also highlighted that the changes will encourage more competition while keeping users safe.
The changes resolving the litigation between the companies are awaiting the judge’s approval on Nov. 6, 2025.
Epic Games and Google’s longstanding legal fight began in August 2020, simultaneously with the start of the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple, as the company behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine called out both tech giants for their monopolistic practices and unreasonably high fees on their Google Play and App Store markets.
“Google has made an awesome proposal, subject to court approval, to open up Android in the US Epic v. Google case and settle our disputes. It genuinely doubles down on Android’s original vision as an open platform to streamline competing store installs globally, reduce service fees for developers on Google Play, and enable third-party in-app and web payments,” replied to Samat’s post CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney.
According to Google spokesperson Dan Jackson, Google has agreed to reduce its fees to 20% for in-app purchases that provide a gameplay advantage and to 9% for those that don’t, while it currently charges a 15% fee for subscriptions and 15% on the first $1 million of developer revenue each year, with a 30% fee applied to any revenue beyond that, and special deals for some major developers on the table.
If developers use an alternative payment system, Google may still charge service fees on those transactions, according to the proposal. However, in practice, it appears that when users pay through an alternative billing system, developers are not required to pay any billing fees to Google, said Jackson to The Verge.
