Overview
- The Korea Fair Trade Commission sent an examiner's report to Google on Wednesday that alleges the Games/Google Velocity Program (internally “Project Hug”) ran from July 2019 to March 2026 and conditioned financial support on favoring Google Play.
- The report estimates the programme affected about 14.16 trillion won (roughly $9.1 billion) in related revenue and says the commission may seek a penalty of up to 6 percent of that amount, about 849.6 billion won, if a violation is found.
- KFTC examiners say the deals were structured so payments rose as developers earned more on Google Play, which reduced developers’ incentives to distribute games through rival stores such as OneStore and produced de facto exclusive dealing.
- Google has denied breaking the law, said it will cooperate with the probe, and has eight weeks to submit a written response before the full commission considers final corrective measures and any fine.
- The case builds on earlier KFTC actions against Google and sits alongside global probes of app‑store rules, so any behavioral remedies ordered in Seoul could influence how platforms run developer incentive programmes elsewhere.