Epic Games has confirmed that Fortnite’s upcoming release on Android devices will not utilize Google Play.
In lieu of the visibility and access of the Google Play Store, Fortnite will be made available via an installer found on Epic’s website. This is obviously quite unique, and Epic’s founder Tim Sweeney explained the decision in an interview with Eurogamer.
“Epic’s goal is to bring its games directly to customers,” Sweeney said. “We believe gamers will benefit from competition among software sources on Android. Competition among services gives consumers lots of great choices and enables the best to succeed based on merit.”
In short, Epic’s belief is that the 30 percent store tax that Google collects is not warranted thanks to how little it is actually involved with the game.
“It’s a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” Sweeney said. “And it’s disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We’re intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac.”
Android, like PC and Mac, is an open platform for distribution. Apple’s iOS ecosystem is similar to that of consoles, meaning that there was no choice but to use the iTunes App Store for distribution, like the PlayStation Network store or Xbox Live store.
Fortnite on Android is still slated for a release some time this summer. Sweeney estimates that of the 2.5 billion Android devices in the world, only 250 million are “Fortnite-ready” due to the game’s technical requirements.
Published: Aug 3, 2018 08:37 am