Epic Games Hires Veteran Big Tech Lawyer After Antitrust Battles

Epic Games Inc., a software developer known for its popular Fortnite video game franchise and landmark antitrust disputes with Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, and others, has brought on longtime technology industry attorney Reginald “Reggie” Davis as its new general counsel.

Davis joined the company after five years as the top lawyer for digital real estate closing platform Qualia Labs Inc. He comes to privately-held Epic with decades of public company expertise, which some observers see as possible foreshadowing of taking his new employer public. Davis succeeds Epic’s now former legal chief, Canon Pence, who announced in December he would step down after more than a decade leading its law department.

Epic and Pence, who said via LinkedIn he’s taking time away from legal practice to focus on making music, declined to discuss his departure. Davis and Epic’s founder and CEO, Tim Sweeney, who has taken a lead role in the company’s antitrust crusade against Big Tech, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“It is an important time for Epic,” said Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School who has closely followed the company’s high-profile antitrust fights over the years. “I think Reggie is a great choice. He has a career in the Silicon Valley legal world—including the video game industry—that anyone would envy. And he is someone who can handle tough situations with good humor.”

Davis, a former offensive tackle on Harvard University’s football team, began his legal career at San Francisco’s Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft, where he made partner at a law firm that later merged with Duane Morris. He then spent more than nine years at Yahoo Corp. as an in-house litigator who the company tapped to be its “click fraud czar” in 2007. He left Yahoo two years later.

For the next decade Davis held legal chief jobs at video game maker Zynga Inc. and software company DocuSign Inc., both of which he helped go public. Davis left DocuSign in 2019, took a sabbatical to travel the world with his family, and joined Qualia in 2021. Qualia recently elevated deputy general counsel Denise Galvin Vieira, who worked with Davis at DocuSign and Zynga, to replace him.

His move to Epic within the last month comes at a key time in the company’s courtroom quest to push back against alleged anti-competitive actions in the app store marketplace. Epic scored an appellate litigation win last month against Apple. In November, Epic settled a long-running antitrust feud with Google that should also resolve related cases involving Samsung Electronics Co.

“Epic has effectively won its antitrust cases—expressly in the case of Google, and in practice the Apple case,” said Stanford’s Lemley.

Big Legal Bills

Epic, which in 2024 sold a $1.5 billion stake to the Walt Disney Co., has for years been considered one of the more valuable privately held companies—and thus a perennial candidate to pursue an initial public offering. Epic has also faced headwinds, shedding 16% of its workforce in 2023 amid an effort to cut costs as it continued battling Apple and Google in court.

Epic’s Sweeney told Business Insider last year the company had spent more than $100 million in legal fees fighting Apple alone. Epic is sparring with Google over a request it made to a federal judge last summer for the reimbursement of $205 million in legal fees stemming from that case, according to court filings.

Gary Bornstein, a partner and co-head of the litigation group at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, has taken the lead for Epic in managing its antitrust docket. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Lemley, a top litigator in Silicon Valley, has in the past represented Apple, Google, and Epic in various matters but said he doesn’t currently represent any of them. While he doesn’t speak for those companies, Lemley said Epic is ready for a new chapter after turning the antitrust tide in court.

“The rulings offer a real possibility of opening up the Epic Store as a platform for other games, which will be important as Epic looks ahead to a world beyond just Fortnite,” Lemley said.

A New Tune

Pence, who advised Epic for nearly two decades during his time there and as a patent lawyer at what is now Hunton Andrews Kurth, is also turning the page.

Last year he launched Twilark, an independent songwriting and music project whose social media feeds describe it as “born from the crossroads of southern melancholy and gothic folk.” Pence’s debut album, The Taming Ties Create, was self-released in September after being recorded in Nashville.

The aspiring musician, who is reportedly self-taught, dropped a new track in December and has a three-song EP due out early this year, according to online indie music outlets. Pence, who was hired by Epic in 2012, lives in Raleigh, N.C.