Fortnite is now finally available from the Google Play Store
Fortnite during its peak was said to be raking in a ton of cash from in-game purchases. The game is free-to-play, but players can opt to purchase items in the game to spruce up their characters and other cosmetic changes. Needless to say that Epic probably did not relish the idea of giving a cut to the likes of Apple and Google from in-app purchases.
While they could not bypass the iOS App Store, they could bypass Google Play, which is what they did. Now it looks like Epic has had a change of heart because if you did not feel comfortable downloading the game from outside the Play Store, you will now be able to download Fortnite from the Play Store.
According to Epic:
“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.”
While downloading Fortnite from Epic’s own website is relatively safe, Google has put in several security measures in its Play Store designed to scan apps for malware and other bad practices. This has created a peace of mind while downloading apps from the Play Store, and Google, for the most part, has done a pretty good job.
So if the unavailability from the Play Store was what held you back from downloading Fortnite on your phone, you can now rest assured by heading on over to the Play Store to get your hands on the game.