Fortnite on Android dodges Google's store

Title Fortnite on Android dodges Google's store
Author Nick Diamon
Posted in News
When August 3, 2018

Fortnite will soon be available on Android mobile devices, but not through Google Play. Instead, iOS-less players will need to "sideload" Epic's proprietary software to install and play the game..

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Watching peoples’ reactions to this is pretty revealing, to say the least.

On one hand, I get the concern over doing this - lots of kids will be changing settings on phones, potentially exposing them to all sorts of weird malware.

But on the other hand, this directly aligns with Tim Sweeney’s comments on stores over the last few years. Especially everything he’s said about Windows.

Dedicated gamer communities all over - especially PC gaming communities and Android communities - have been praising open platforms forever. But:

  • It seems like every time a developer with enough power chooses to publish their games somewhere other than Steam, like how Call of Duty and Destiny are exclusively on Battle.net, they get shit for it. People who complain about closed platforms go and balk when their favorite games can’t be purchased on Steam.

  • Now a game on Android will be distributed somewhere other than Google Play - exemplifying the openness of Android. So for the Android fans who have touted the platforms’ openness compared to iOS, it’s surprising to see so many complain when this game isn’t availalble through Google’s proprietary store.

Eh, that’s totally their call. Seems like they are going to limit their exposure to potential users by avoiding the market.

It’s interesting becuase they’ve evidently done the math and determined that the 30% cut Android takes would be more than the lost revenue from people not installing the client at all. I have my doubts about that, but presumably they have some real numbers to back it. Fortnite might be enough of a juggernaut to overcome that friction, or it may just be that their market is actually savvy enough that the barrier isn’t really a barrier anymore for them.

Monetarily, they’d need to sell ~42% more product on Google Play to make the same amount as they would without the 70/30 split. That seems like a good trade off for them.

But even forgetting raw monetary split, simply owning all of their own data (and keeping that data from Google entirely) is extremely valuable too.

Yeah makes sense. On the platforms where they couldn’t avoid it (console, iOS), they’re losing the 30%. On the ones where they can, they’re doing so. Since they have so many players, they know they can get away with it now on Android.

If you’re going to be locked into one way of purchasing and playing the game, you might as well be locked into the one where all your other shit is.

Epic only selling through their platform isn’t any more open or consumer-friendly than Steam or Google’s proprietary store. (Well, their policies could conceivably be, but the mere decision to go with a different single point of purchase isn’t praiseworthy.)

There was a podcast (can’t find the link, it’s not in English anyway, so…) where one of the Epic devs explained some of the technical reasons behind their decision to not sell their games through Steam. Some of them were related to consumer-friendliness.

Like, for example, Steam content delivery system can’t guarantee up to date clients for your whole player base, up to 12 hours delays are possible, that’s why most of the MMOs, free2play games on Steam have their own launchers.

Another reason was Steam match making can’t handle player base spikes effectively, meanwhile Epic wrote its own system which could start additional Amazon cloud servers if certain number of players can’t find a match and waiting in line.

Basically, making their own platform they gave their players way better more smooth multiplayer experience than Steam, which is certainly praise worthy.

Additionally, it’s kind of a false comparison to try to equivocate a single developer’s decision on how to sell their game, and how the owner of an entire platform chooses to control what other developers and customers can do on that platform.

I agree. Which is why I don’t understand why you were doing that.

I wasn’t.

I was reacting to the hypocrisy of people who claim to love open platforms, and decry closed platforms, but then hate it when developers take advantage of those open platforms.

There is nothing hypocritical about wanting open platforms and also wanting consumer choice about where and how to shop and obtain software. One might even say they are closely aligned.

I think you guys are missing the real point here:
Fortnight is a suck ass game.

Also seems really poorly suited for mobile, but I guess I am not the target market.

When is Steam coming to Android?

Soon. I can’t wait to stream steam to my tablet.

I thought that was out already.

If they’re so upset, why don’t they boycott Google entirely?