Both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store may soon make changes to their methods as the two are being challenged by Epic Games. The company which released Fortnite back in August proved it can bypass the current system. It launched the mobile game through an official website and not the Play Store. It’s the Android version of the game but Epic decided to do one epic thing: to do things on its own. The beta version rolled out first for the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Galaxy Tab S4 owners before going public for other Android devices.
Fortnite didn’t launch through the Play Store and not even from a fake site. Epic was clear since the beginning. There were fake Fornite games seen on the app store but the dev reiterated it’s not available in the Google Play Store.
Epic Games was successful but there were some issues uncovered like the fact the Fortnite Android installer could let hackers add malware. The game was once blocked on in-store demos and more problems were heard but despite all those negative issues, the game still hit 15M downloads within one month.
To date, Fornite has over 200 million registered players. Epic Games has already generated revenue of $1 billion–solely their own doing. Epic doesn’t need to split the money with Google because it released the game on its own.
This sounds like an ideal setup for game developers but not everyone can do so. Epic Games has the resources so there is a possibility it can release other games by bypassing Google and Apple’s business model. The latter allows developers to keep 70% of revenue but Epic may allow 88%.
Steam already allows the release of games for different platforms but has already made changes. An Epic Games app store may happen so let’s wait and see.
VIA: WSJ
