Epic Games announced today that it will not distribute its massively popular game Fortnite on Android through Google’s Play Store marketplace. Instead, the company plans to directly distribute the software to players through the official Fortnite website, where Android users can download a Fortnite Installer program to install the game on compatible devices. The news confirms reports from earlier this week that Epic would bypass Google for the Android launch of the game.
There is no concrete release date yet for the Android version of Fortnite, but rumors circulating suggest the game’s release will be tied to the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 9 launch. Epic declined to comment on the game’s release date or any partnership plans with Samsung.
Regardless, the announcement marks a bold departure from the widespread industry practice of using mobile operating system makers like Apple and Google for app distribution. For Fortnite on iOS, Epic decided to distribute the game on the App Store, most likely because it had no other method of getting iPhone users to easily download the software. (Apple, unlike Google, does not allow iOS users to download apps that are not first approved by its internal review processes and distributed through its proprietary marketplace.) With Google and its more open platform, Epic can get away with distributing the app itself.
CEO Tim Sweeney says the primary motivation here is twofold. Epic wants to maintain its direct relationship with consumers. (The company currently distributes Fortnite on PC through its own Epic Games Launcher, instead of using Valve’s popular Steam platform.)
“Epic wants to have a direct relationship with our customers on all platforms where that’s possible,” Sweeney told The Verge over email. “The great thing about the Internet and the digital revolution is that this is possible, now that physical storefronts and middlemen distributors are no longer required.”
The second reason is financial: Epic does not want to pay Google’s 30 percent cut, especially considering the entire game is funded through in-app purchases. “The 30 percent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” Sweeney says. “There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers.”
But on mobile platforms that are open, like Android, “30 percent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service,” he says. Sweeney adds that Epic is “intimately familiar with these costs” from its direct distribution of Fortnite on Mac and PC.
Fortnite on iOS made $15 million in its first three weeks on the market, so it’s reasonable to assume the mobile version of the game is a sizable source of revenue for Epic. Last month, the company also reduced the revenue cut it takes from asset makers who sell digital work on its Unreal Engine 4 platform, in part because of the ongoing financial success of Fortnite.
Reasonably, there are some concerns about how exactly this will work, and whether it opens up Android users to any potential security or data privacy risks since running third-party software outside the Play Store involves removing certain protections on Android devices. Sweeney says he doesn’t see security as a big issue here. “Gamers have proven able to adopt safe software practices, and gaming has thrived on the open PC platform through many sources.” He cites marketplaces like Steam, Activision Blizzard’s Battle.net, and Riot Games’ League of Legends platform.
“We’re confident Android will be similarly successful,” Sweeney adds. “Most importantly, mobile operating systems increasingly provide robust, permissions-based security, enabling users to choose what each app is allowed to do: save files; access the microphone; access your contacts. In our view, this is the way all computer and smartphone platforms should provide security, rather than entrusting one monopoly app store as the arbiter of what software users are allowed to obtain.”
There are a number of open questions from here onward, principally how Google will respond. (The company was not immediately available for comment.) Furthermore, we don’t know how this will eventually impact availability in China. Sweeney says the initial Android launch of Fortnite will be worldwide excluding China, and he says Epic is currently working out a China launch for both iOS and Android.
“Because Google Play doesn’t operate in China, the whole China Android market is already served by other direct-to-customer software sources such as Tencent’s WeChat and the Xiaomi Store,” Sweeney says. He added that the company is “exploring various possibilities” for distributing Fortnite on other third-party app stores, but it has nothing to announce right now.
That said, Epic’s move here will surely have a big impact on what app makers decide to do in the future. Fortnite is popular enough — it has more than 125 million registered players as of June — that scores of Android users will likely download the game at launch, even if it requires a little bit more technical know-how than usual. And Epic has the industry clout and technological resources to go it alone in this regard, as it has been doing for years now on the PC platform.
Still, that Epic is making such an audacious move with the Android release of Fortnite, which will arguably be its most popular platform, is an eye-popping turn of events for an already unprecedented gaming narrative.
Comments
Good luck with that. This smells like a flop waiting to happen.
Why not just release the game in the play store but require a paid account to log in, which must be bought via their web site.
This is literally the worst possible solution, forcing customers to allow installation of APKs from unknown sources.
By sponplat on 08.03.18 10:05am
Buying a paid account for a free game, especially when the fact that it’s free is one of the biggest selling points, seems like it would turn many players away from the game.
Also, they’re not releasing the APK from some random media hosting site, they’re releasing the game from their official website. Not exactly a sketchy APK from an unknown source.
By CJdaELF on 08.03.18 10:14am
But once you’ve unchecked "install from unknown sources" in settings, it’s dramatically easier to install further malware. It’s great that end-users have this kind of control, but it’s a bad practice for a major publisher to urge users (many of whom will be children) to do this.
By Titus Thorngate on 08.03.18 10:46am
It’s not like the box has to stay checked permanently. If the person fears they’ll have no self-control over tapping every "Install" button they see, then they can just uncheck the "install from unknown sources" box after they install Fortnite.
By Leap Day William on 08.03.18 11:11am
But the instructions had better be explicit to do that, because people do forget.
By gommerthus on 08.03.18 11:30am
Samsung does this best actually. When an app shortcuts you to the "install unknown sources" box, and you click it, there is a "turn on only for this app" option, and it is enabled by default. So it is disabled immediately after installing the app.
By merlotbronze on 08.03.18 11:44am
How this is not the norm I do not know. I assumed, having had Samsung for my past few phones, that this was how Android did it by default.
By RikF on 08.03.18 3:05pm
While Google may allow side loading code, it doesn’t need to make it easy.
By err404 on 08.03.18 7:57pm
But people won’t because they will go straight to playing the game and then get distracted by other stuff. This has the potential to open a massive security hole in Android for millions of customers, most of them are dumb as box of rocks when it comes to security.
By Sixth clawed demon on 08.03.18 1:07pm
how the fuck am i supposed to stay on topic and not make 30 rock references with this guy here? killin me
By JesseDegenerate on 08.03.18 3:22pm
By Leap Day William on 08.19.18 9:36pm
Bad practice according to…? Can you name any other large app company like Epic that’s done this and something terrible happened? I wouldn’t necessarily assume the worst case scenario without data to back it up.
By nStyle on 08.03.18 12:13pm
So you are saying "there’s no proof". Let’s screenshot this moment for posterity.
And let’s wait 1 year from now and see how many instances of people getting infected by malware because they left "unknown sources" option on, and downloaded a supposed Fortnite cheat to their phone.
By gommerthus on 08.03.18 1:09pm
"downloaded a supposed Fortnite cheat to their phone."
If they wanted to download a cheat (booo) they’d need to turn it on anyway. This has nothing to do with Fortnite’s distribution.
By RikF on 08.03.18 3:07pm
You’re right of course, but at the end of the day that’s not really Epic’s problem—it’s Google’s. The latest version of Android has gotten a little better about this by giving the user the option to allow "this unknown source" as opposed to just all "unknown sources". But only a small percentage of mobile devices are currently running the latest Android version, and with Android’s broken update process that’s unlikely to change any time soon.
By Sudano on 08.03.18 12:39pm
Amazon used to require this to get Amazon Prime Video for the longest time. The world managed to survive.
By alissa914g on 08.04.18 10:24pm
The game works around microtransactions, not an upfront purchase. If they don’t want to pay the 30% tax on every transaction, they have limited options.
I don’t think they’d be doing this if the game wasn’t already super popular.
The one clearly left out here is marketing and visibility. They are coming from a position of power (and immense popularity) that allows them to try this approach.
By BRANDiD on 08.03.18 10:15am
They could work out a deal with El Goog’ like netflix did
By Oldarney on 08.03.18 4:03pm
Wait, so you think that one of the biggest games in history, at the height of its popularity, and likely the single most anticipated Android game launch, will be a flop because it isn’t on Google Play?
Do you live on Earth? Have you seen that there are more people watching Fortnite on Twitch at any given night than watching any show on cable, and at many times any show on TV at all? And this is just those watching someone play, not even those playing themselves.
It’s not a game for me, but that doesn’t mean I will pretend it isn’t the largest video game phenomenon in a long time. It is to people in their teens and 20s what Minecraft was to people under 12. That age difference makes something a pop culture powerhouse, mentioned in rap songs and sewn into custom jackets at the NBA draft.
By MosquitoControl on 08.03.18 10:30am
You need to lay off your hyperbole meds, bud. It currently has 600k viewers and half of that is from a tournament stream. It’s a popular game but saying it garners more viewers than cable/broadcast TV makes you look foolish.
By Mash Smash on 08.03.18 7:16pm
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/06/07/friday-fortnite-is-drawing-more-live-viewership-than-the-walking-dead/
By Big Macs on 08.05.18 4:10pm
You realize that if you publish a game in the Google Play Store, that Google gets their cut regardless of how/what.
Your solution doesn’t solve Epic’s problem at all.
By gommerthus on 08.03.18 11:29am
If I were a malware developer this would probably be the greatest day of my life…. Millions of people installing Fortnite-related APKs with their guard down. Like candy from a baby.
By mobile_phoney on 08.03.18 12:56pm
yep they must be rubbing their hands with glee today. I’m sure they are already cooking up websites and fake domains as well so they can get users to download fake apps as well.
This is going to make malware writers some serious money.
By Sixth clawed demon on 08.03.18 1:12pm
Epic will probably make a simple Fornite app with nothing but a link to automatically direct the user to the download page.
By Jonab on 08.03.18 3:09pm