Google toyed with the idea of buying out Epic Games back before Stadia launched

Ben Schoon | Nov 21 2023 - 9:42 am PT

The ongoing Epic Games vs. Google trial has revealed a lot of interesting tidbits about the two companies, and now some emails have surfaced in which Google discussed the idea of buying out Epic Games back before Stadia, its now-dead cloud gaming platform, even launched.

As reported by The Verge, Google was at one point working on “Project Elektra,” which would have seen the company try to obtain a controlling stake in Epic Games as a way of influencing “Epic’s approach to Android.” An email from Google’s Don Harrison explains:

We are bringing a package offering to BC on Thursday re Epic. Spoke to Jamie and I think we need a couple pages about what investment could look like and someone there to discuss (based on whatever we can glean publicly). We just did a prep call and investment was the only way people could realistically think of to sway them on Epic’s approach to Android — because it’s easy to imagine us investing billions ant some ridiculous valuation (for everyone except for the corpdev folks).

On the topic, none other than Stadia lead Phil Harrison chimed in with “high-level strategic rationale” for Google investing in Epic Games, saying that it would benefit YouTube (by increasing “game watch time”), Google Cloud (by switching Fortnite from Amazon’s cloud services to Google’s), and also “Yeti.”

“Yeti,” of course, ended up being Google Stadia. “Project Yeti” was used throughout the platform’s development until it formally debuted in late 2019. Harrison specifically listed Fortnite on the platform as a benefit, alongside “Unreal Engine support for all games.”

In response to that email, Google’s Dave Sobota pitched the idea of just buying out Epic Games entirely with the help of Tencent Games, which already had a stake in Epic, to eventually “do a lot of deep commercial things with Epic.” Google apparently discussed investing up to $2 billion or so in an aim to get a 20% stake in Epic as The Verge further notes, but it obviously never went anywhere. Still, it’s fascinating to think what things could have looked like if Google had gone down this route.