There was so much drama revolving around when Fortnite was first announced a couple of years ago. The game was first launched as an exclusive offering on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9. It was launched but not through the Play Store. Some fake sites have been spotted but some were only found to be copies, if not, hackers that could add malware. The Android beta version for other non-Samsung devices was released by Epic Games. For a time, it was blocked on in-store demos as more problems arose.
Fortnite for Android quickly hit new milestones with 15M downloads. We have no idea how many are active players but we believe the number then increased when Fortnite cross-platform play was first offered. Initially, the game wasn’t available in the Google Play Store. It eventually rolled out as the Fortnite game was made ready for more Android device owners.
The Fortnite developer was ready to challenge Google Play Store in app distribution. Epic Games has always been clear since the beginning that it wants to distribute the game from its own site. This was so they could earn more.
It was only a few months since the official game release that Epic generated $1 billion in revenue on its own doing. The number is definitely higher now. Later in the year, the Fortnite Installer on Android was made available on the Epic Games app.
After all that has been said and done, Epic Games’ Fortnite was eventually made available to download from the Google Play Store. That was back in April and now we’re learning the Epic Games Store may soon launch on mobile devices.
The Epic Games Store (EGS) is already a success but CEO Tim Sweeney wants to bring it to iOS and Android. He said, “We think it’s a good way to help the industry [move] forward and it’s another way where Epic as a game developer had built up this audience around Fortnite and learned how to operate a distribution platform on PC and Android.”
EGS will be opened for “all other developers to use with their games and are trying to serve the industry and provide a really interesting alternative to the ecosystem.” It’s the same thing that was done to the Epic Online services and Unreal Engine as perfect examples.
There is no certainty yet but the plans are still there. A Fortnite launcher is available where updates can be downloaded. It also now serves as an official Epic Games App since late last year. We’ll see if Epic Games will push through with this good news.
