Epic Games Launches Fortnite on Google Play Store; Expresses Frustration With TOS

Cover and thumbnail via @Epic Games

• Epic Games make Fortnite available on Google Play Store.
• The moves comes with Epic expressing their reservations against the platform. 
• Fortnite had been available on the Epic Games Store and Apple Store up until now. 

Epic Games has finally made Fortnite available on the Google Play Store, but are apprehensive about the move, as they released a statement about being unsatisfied with some of the practices on the platform. The game is still available for download via the Epic Games app as well.

Unlike the Play Store and other platforms, Epic have explicitly said that they want to support game devs as much as possible and are famous for a 88/12% revenue split with a game's developers.  for all titles on the Epic Games Store. However, unlike Epic, Google Play Store has  a 30% revenue cut with the rest going to the developers. In 2018, Epic Games's CEO, Tim Sweeney had said, “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. 30 percent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.”

Epic's CEO Tim Sweeney aimed to revolutionize listing platforms by offering a 88/12% split on all their titles | Image via UploadVR

Talking about their release on the Play Store, Epic Games said “After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization. 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.”

What is interesting is that while Epic are miffed about having to pay the 30% revenue cut to Google, they did not have a problem doing the same with iOS's Apple Store, where the game has been available since 2018. According to Epic, their decision to be available on iOS and not on Android till now, stems from the fact that Apple has a much smaller market share. While Epic have finally come onto the Play Store, they continue to express their dissatisfaction over the platform with even their reading "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.”