It's been almost two years since Fortnite disappeared from the Play Store to be seen on their own through the Epic Store. It was a measure taken by the developers themselves in protest at, according to them, abusive profit margins applied by Google in its store. Now finally, after a long time of friction, the game is available again in the Play Store.
Why is he back?
The reason is very simple. When you download software outside of the Play Store, the operating system will prompt you in a thousand ways warning you that the software you are about to install could be dangerous. It is something that obviously scares less advanced users, so on more than one occasion more than one will have canceled the installation and gone on to something else.
For this reason, Epic Games have decided to give in, and the game will become available in the official Android store so that anyone who wants to can install it directly on their terminal without having to download additional APKs from other websites. This means that Epic Games will once again share a 30% of profits with Google, something that its CEO, Tim Sweeney, has not liked one bit from the beginning.
The danger of not being in the Play Store
Whether it is because you do not want to go through the hoop of giving 30% of your income to Google, or because your application does not meet the access requirements to the Play Store, the fact of not being present in the official Google store is a tremendous handicap for your application. Users are limited to entering the Play Store to download applications and games. They know that everything that is available in the store will be able to install without problems, so it is quite rare that they download an APK separately (unless you have some knowledge of the subject).
If they try and decide to install something “from abroad”, it is scary. It is just what has forced Epic Games to back down, since there are many impediments that are proposed to the user when installing a package of unknown origin. On the one hand, you have to unlock the installation protection for packages from unknown sources in the system to be able to execute the installation and, finally, you have to accept a message that warns you that the installation could have consequences if we don't know the origin of the application .
All this is understandable from the point of view of system security, but Epic Games sees it as a privileged position to force developers to pay the abusive rate of the Play Store. Why has not protested the same with Apple? According to them, the 30% also requested by Apple corresponds to the small market that it moves and, in addition, in iOS there is no other way to install software other than through the App Store, so it is better not to protest or you will be left out. .