To most gamers, Fortnite may seem ubiquitous. It’s one of the most-played video games in the world, it’s bringing in digital cash hand over fist, and even when Fortnite fans aren’t playing it, they’re watching it on streaming platforms. There’s only one major gap in Fortnite’s coverage, which has long been the Google Play Store. Android users could still download the game through Fortnite’s official website, but it wasn’t available to search for or download through Android’s biggest storefront – until now.
Epic Games has seemingly given up its crusade to force Google to lower fees for Fortnite’s digital transactions. The issue for Epic was that, due to the popularity and revenue of Fortnite, it thought Google should give it a better deal than other games. Google has refused to give up ground, however. Epic appears to be the first to have blinked.
Fortnite will now be available through the Google Play Store, likely with the full 30% fee on all digital transactions that Google requires of all products. Fortnite will likely grow significantly in popularity on Android as a result. Being on the storefront makes the game just a button click away and gets rid of all the warnings about potential malware, too.
While it’s certainly possible that Epic did end up making a deal with Google, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Epic released a statement regarding Fortnite coming to the Google Play Store and it isn’t exactly complimentary, like one would expect if a deal had just been made. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups and updated, restrictive manufacture and carrier agreements and dealings.” To say the least, Epic’s insinuating that Google strong-armed Fortnite out of being an accessible game outside of the Google Play network.
Regardless of how Epic feels about the situation, Fortnite is now playable through the Google Play Store and Google is likely very happy to have it there. It likely isn’t going anywhere, either. Now that Epic has decided to support Google Play, there’s unlikely a possibility of going back.
The big question that many are likely asking is why Epic would put Fortnite on Google Play now, as opposed to any other time. It could be that Google’s anti-third party efforts finally pushed Epic to do something. Some are speculating that it could be due to Epic seeing Fortnite popularity dwindle, in hopes of recovering some players on Android. Whatever Epic’s reasoning, Fortnite fans with Android devices have no reason not to be happy.
Fortnite is available now on PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and Android and iOS devices.
