Epic’s lobbying group wasn’t a ‘coalition’ as announced, exec says in Google trial

CARY – An executive from Epic Games said Thursday that the “Coalition for App Fairness” launched in 2021 as it battled app store bans from Apple and Google was not backed by anyone else as the Cary company said at the time.

So reports Sean Hollister of TheVerge who is covering the Epic-Google antitrust suit in a San Francisco federal court on a minute-by-minute basis.

“I personally broke this story in 2021, but Epic would not confirm or deny the details to me back then,” Hollister reported.

“[Matthew] Weissinger [vce president of marketing] just did that today on the stand. ‘Yes, it was our idea,’ he said, confirming that Epic paid a consultant $100,000 to start the lobbying group, and that there were no other founding members.”

Epic said the “Coalition” included Spotify, Basecamp and others as “founding members” when announced in2020, Hollister noted.

“If you’re referring to the incorporation, no they were not,” said Weissinger.

Read much more about the Google-Epic fight over Fortnite and how it involved other companies, including Lenovo, at The Verge.