After several days with possible rumors, it has been the Epic Games which has confirmed that the new Galaxy Note 9 will receive Fortnite exclusively for a period of 4 months. This means that "in theory", the rest of users who do not have the new Samsung flagship will have to wait until Christmas to finally get hold of the game. But how exactly?
Without Google Play, users are unprotected
Epic has decided that they will be the ones who share the Fortnite APK on its official website, inviting the user to visit it and proceed with the download directly from their phone or tablet. This, obviously, will make millions of users go to the search engine in turn to write "how to download fortnite" or "download Fortnite APK for Android," a query that, unfortunately, will lead to services outside of Epic Games, with the possibility of ending up with anything from outdated versions to packages infected with malware.
By not going through the filter of the Google Play Store, users will be unprotected against any type of download, a package that they will quickly install without checking what permissions it requests at the time of installation.
Download the APK of Fortnite: difficulties and problems for the user
Those would be the worst cases that we could find, but assuming that everything goes according to plan and that most users go to the official Epic website to download, there will still be some complications that not all users will know how to save. We refer to the process of allowing "install apps from unknown sources”, Something that they will have to activate manually from the Security panel within the System Settings (it will appear automatically if it is done from Android Oreo).
They want 30% of their pie
En an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, has clarified that the decision to offer direct download of the Fortnite APK is due to the disagreement that the company maintains about the commission that exists in the Google application platform. All those developers who publish their application in the Play Store, must direct 30% of their income to the coffers of Mountain View, something that Epic are not willing to grant, since they consider it a «cost too high«.
Sweeney says that they are perfectly familiar with offering a direct download service after going through PC and Mac, so in his experience, doing the same on Android should not be a problem. Probably not for them, but for the user it sure does.