Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, a famously vocal critic of Google and Apple, has agreed to a settlement with Google that severely restricts his ability to criticize the company. As part of the binding term sheet, Sweeney has signed away his right to disparage Google or advocate for changes to its app store policies until at least 2032.
The agreement requires Sweeney and Epic to publicly state that Google's Android platform is "procompetitive" and to make good faith efforts to advocate for it as a model. While Epic can still target Apple through the Coalition for App Fairness, Sweeney is now effectively muzzled regarding Google and may even have to appear in court to defend the settlement.
The main topics covered are the legal settlement between Epic and Google, the specific non-disparagement and advocacy clauses imposed on Tim Sweeney, and the effective end of his public criticism of Google's app store practices for nearly a decade.
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.”
Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google until 2032
Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney.
Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney.
But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It’s right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google.
On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company, he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google’s app store polices. 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.
And while Epic can still be part of the “Coalition for App Fairness,” the organization that Epic quietly and solely funded to be its attack dog against Google and Apple, he can only point that organization at Apple now.
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.
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