While Fortnite has been kicking around on the iOS store for some time, disagreements in revenue shares have led Epic Games to continuously delay the battle royale’s inclusion on Google’s Play Store. Clearly negotiations didn’t exactly mount to much and, fed up with all the legal nonsense, Epic has accepted Google’s conditions and thrown their killer app onto the store.
It’s been possible to download Fortnite on your Android for some time now but it’s always been a bit of a chore. See, Epic didn’t exactly enjoy Google’s conditions for including the game in the Play Store selection. Google basically requires a 30% tax on any and all in-app purchases made in free-to-use apps and Epic wasn’t stoked that it would only receive 70% of the revenue generated from the (copious amounts of) microtransactions in Fortnite. Yet it seems it has finally had enough of forcing users to go through third-party channels — Epic has now caved to Google’s demands.
According to Epic, the reason for finally agreeing to Google’s terms is that it’s just more efficient to operate Fortnite through an official platform. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store,” read’s the publisher’s official statement.
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, has previously been very outspoken regarding Google and Apple’s policies regarding apps on their respective stores. “We hope that Google will revise its policies and business dealings in the near future, so that all developers are free to reach and engage in commerce with customers on Android and in the Play Store through open services, including payment services, that can compete on a level playing field,” continues the company’s statement.
Now that Fortnite is officially available on the Play Store, the third-party app that used to launch the game will transition into the Epic Games App and act as supplementary software to their games available on PC. It will remain available on Epic Games’ website.
