Epic CEO Tim Sweeney might be one of the most outspoken people in the history of the world. He fought two of the world’s most valuable and powerful companies almost all the way to the US Supreme Court, insulting them again and again: “crooked,” “deceitful,” “insanely sneaky,” calling Android a “fake open platform,” calling both companies “gangster-style businesses that will do anything they think they can get away with,” telling me how Google’s Project Hug was “an astonishingly corrupt effort at a massive scale.”
On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company over anything covered in the term sheet — Google’s app distribution practices, its fees, how it treats games and apps — he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google’s app store policies, too. He can’t criticize Google’s app store practices. In fact, he has to praise them.
The contract states that “Epic believes that the Google and Android platform, with the changes in this term sheet, are procompetitive and a model for app store / platform operations, and will make good faith efforts to advocate for the same.”
He may even have to appear in other courts around the world to defend this deal with Google, and Google gets to make sure his public statements are supportive of the deal from here on out.
In response to our story, the Epic Games Newsroom tweeted: “Epic and Tim agreed to not criticize Google related to app store distribution and fees. All other topics are still on the table and criticism is fair game.”
You can take a peek at the relevant sections of the term sheet above, and Sweeney’s digital signature. According to the signed document, it will expire five years after Google’s done making the last of its changes to its service fees. Google plans to do that by September 30th, 2027 at the latest, so Sweeney may not be able to speak his mind about Google’s app store until September 2032.
Correction, March 5th: An earlier version of this story misstated that Sweeney signed away Epic’s ability to sue or disparage the company. In fact, he signed away the ability to sue or disparage over items covered by the term sheet.
