Fortnite on Android will bypass Google Play | Hacker News Reader

Fortnite on Android will bypass Google Play

arstechnica.com

66 pointse1ven84 comments

Having only one app store allowed on a device is anti-competitive and is an area where I would approve regulators forcing changes. The fact that Apple has exclusive right to approve what I can install, and then extracts monopoly rent on top of depriving me of software, should be banned.

Banned on what grounds? Apple doesn't have a monopoly, so there's no anticompetitive angle here.

If you have 2-3 platforms that all have the same restrictions you may not have a monopoly, but you have a cartel in control of the market. Thats pretty anticompetitive IMO.

They have a monopoly on what can be installed on my phone, and censor what gets into the app store, so they are therefore censoring me.

This only matters if they're the only platform available. But, they're not. You can use Android, its forks, or otherwise. While one can be philosophically opposed to their walled-garden, there is zero legal ground to stand on to regulate Apple in this regard when they are not a monopoly as defined by law.

They have the right to control what is available in their own app store, whether we like it or not.

Calling their control "monopoly" and "censorship" really dilutes the actual meaning of both terms

Sounds like you are talking cross purposes. S/He argues for changing the law and you are explaining the current law.

That wasn't very clear from the original posts, as they discussed anti-competitive behavior and regulators, not new legislation to be written. To me this implied a desire for them to be regulated under current law, which may have been my mistake in reading it.

It makes more sense read with new legislation being the intent, so you have a point.

That said, that type of regulation seems overly heavy-handed IMHO, and I'm typically not an anti-regulation type of person.

First world problems, eh?

You gave them your blessing to do all this and more when you bought the phone and didn't reject it when you read their terms and conditions for its usage.

iOS has always been a walled garden. Apple is proud of that fact.

I'm sure nobody could stop you putting your own OS on top, or hacking it wide open... But I don't think you have any right to force Apple to alter their software to allow you to do anything.

None of those words mean what you are implying it means.

You don't have to use their phone you know. Android is substantially better about this, different app stores are possible.

They don't control it though, you could root your phone and install whatever you want.

This isn't always an option, and may violate the DMCA

Apple has monopoly on their store and they have ability to play kingmakers on other platforms with app developers in every niche. Without presence on all relevant platforms your product or service will die off.

Android allows as many app stores on device as you'd like. Popular ones include f-droid and Amazon store. Both can be easily installed without rooting by simply downloading them from the web. Both provide app signing, updates, and authentication.

You are allowed to install other app stores on a android device.You can even install apps from unknown sources.But you need to be responsible for your own security.

you need to be responsible for your own security.

Or they could make sandboxing actually work.

I am not aware that anyone has ever made this work. Full VMs are escapable, iOS jails have been broken and even permissions technically allowed can be abused, etc. There is room to improve, but "just make it impossible to escape the sandbox" is massively oversimplifying. It also makes it harder to make useful apps if you reduce API surface.

if you can produce a flawless, performant, sandbox, fame and fortune awaits you.

However, you can't install other app stores from the Play Store itself. That seems pretty anti-competitive. Google also bans ad-blockers from its Play Store. Why? Because they interfere with its business model. Again, anti-competitive. No different than Verizon banning Skype from its network.

It's a shame the EC didn't hit Google over these, too.

It's kinda a chain of trust. One of the value of the Play Store is that you trust it not to include malware (if you do). If they allowed other app stores to be installed through it, google can't be confident in saying if you use our store, you won't get malware.

You trust the Google Play Store not to have malware?

It's certainly far more trustworthy than the iOS app store and Chinese app stores, all by a wide margin.

Based on what metric? Google doesn’t even pretend to review apps and the Google app permissions framework is laughable.

Based on total malware installs, where Apple has everybody beat by even just Xcodeghost alone.

Google doesn't pretend that manually reviewing apps prevents malware because it obviously (to any software engineer) doesn't. It does, however do both static and dynamic analysis of the apps in its store, unlike Apple and the Chinese app stores.

And that really hasn’t help. Xcodeghost basically affected the Chinese App Store where app authors downloaded a non Apple hosted version of Xcode.

https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-mobile-android-vs-ios...

https://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/security-t...

That doesn’t even consider all of the unpatched Android security holes.

https://www.esecurityplanet.com/mobile-security/how-secure-i...

Or the fact that most Android phones are running older versions that will never get patched.

https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/

Compared to iPhones running the latest versions....

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ios-distribution-news/

There is no "Chinese app store" for iDevices. Anybody who downloaded WeChat anywhere in the world was affected.

Trying to bring uo unpatched devices is changing the subject (security-conscious people use Android devices that get regular security updates) — we were talking about app stores. It remains a fact that far more people have been infected with malware from the Apple App Store than from all other app stores combined.

People who care about security use devices that get updates - that’s true. They buy iOS devices.

Which Android devices get regular updates for over 2 years? 3 years? 5 years?

Android is insecure by design - since most devices can’t be updated. Unlike iOS devices that get updated regularly worldwide without waiting on the carrier.

And I posted links showing that Android is not as secure. Do you have any links to back up your claims?

That doesn't sound anticompetitive in the least. Alternative stores are allowed on Android; Google just isn't going to bend over backwards to do everything for you.

Google allows basically everything on the Play Store. To not specifically restrict their competition would not be "bending over backwards" at all.

You can install ad blocking web browsers just fine. The rule is that you can't publish an app that interferes with another app.

You have plenty of choices. You can choose to buy an Android device like 80% of the rest of the world....

Do you feel that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft should also be forced to open up their platforms?

And yes, they also approve physical game sales and you can’t run a physical disk on either platform without it being cryptographically signed.

They don't. You can go buy a different phone.

I like my iPhone, I just wish I could install software not approved by Apple censors.

You can. Just deploy the software directly to the device using Xcode.

Then buy a different phone.

In an interview [1], Tim Sweeney, Epic Games CEO, addressed why they opted to bypass Google Play:

GamesBeat: Do you see a reason not to put it on Google Play right now? Is that something that would happen in the future?

Sweeney: There are two reasons for what we’re doing. First, we want to have a direct relationship with our customers wherever we can. On open platforms like PC and Android, it’s possible for them to get the software direct from us. We can be in contact with them and not have a third-party distributor in between.

The second motivation is the economics of the store ecosystem as it exists right now. There’s typically a 30/70 split, and from the 70 percent, the developer pays all the costs of developing the game, operating it, marketing it, acquiring users and everything else. For most developers that eats up the majority of their revenue. We’re trying to make our software available to users in as economically efficient a way as possible. That means distributing the software directly to them, taking payment through Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and other options, and not having a store take 30 percent.

If you look at it, the stores on the smartphone platforms actually do very little. They’ll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It’s just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It’s a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/03/tim-sweeney-epics-ceo-on-...

> They’ll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It’s just a bad experience.

This is my biggest complaint about Apple too. I paid you good money so my non-tech-savvy relatives can have one of your phones. When I ask them to install an app, please don't put ads in front of it and confuse them. You are not and ad company, please don't betray my trust in you and your products.

Hilariously enough, Google are actually better than Apple on this.

They don't allow brand keywords to be the target of ads on the play store. They are fine with it on desktop though.

> Tim Sweeney, Fornite CEO

Just to clarify, he is the CEO of Epic Games (company that created Fortnite)

I wish more organisations just put an APK up on their website. Whatsapp does and it's a dawdle to set-up a relative's phone without having to bother with a Google account and Play Store etc

Does Whatsapp update within its own APK, or do you need to download future APKs?

It's great for legit companies, but it also opens the door to the far greater number of malware providers, as seen throughout the history of Windows.

Is there APK signing?

Oh boy, that's gonna be a lot of people enabling the installation of APKs from untrusted sources. I can't see this working well from a security perspective.

Not entirely true!

In order to play Fortnite, you're going to need an up to date phone with modern graphics hardware, and that means it will probably be running Android 8. On Android 8, "install unknown sources" is a per-app permission which means only the Epic Launcher will be able to install other apps.

I think there is close to zero security risk to this strategy assuming the above.

I can see the scam email now: "New Fortnite Update! Please install the attached app. As before, you'll need to bypass security."

Are users capable of playing the game the only users who will attempt to install it? "Fortnite for Android 7" sounds like something users will jump through hoops to install given they've already read something about hoops and Android 8.

And the other 28 rip offs on the appstore isn't going to help anything.

Most modern phones are not on 8. The Oreo install base is only 12.1%, most phones are still running Nougat (7.0 dominates with 21.2%, then 7.1) or Marshmellow (23.5%). Seeing as PUBG Mobile's lowest supported version is 5.0, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume Fornite could do the same.

A lot of Android devices are about to have a real security flaw introduced (and normalized considering the median age of the Fortnite audience) which Epic is handwaving away.

Fortnite requires specialized graphics hardware only found in very, very few phones. It will not work on older devices.

No it doesn't. The requirements are Android 5.0, and can support something as weak as the Motorola E4 Plus[0]. And as someone who maintains a decently popular app on that platform, you'd be surprised how many former flagships (the Google Pixel in particular) still remain on Android 7.x (my wild guess is so that they can keep the old Google Now launcher) which does not have the selective permissions that come with Oreo.

[0]https://www.androidauthority.com/fortnite-mobile-compatible-...

How do you install the Epic Launcher? Seems unlikely that Google will allow an app designed to work around their store rules in the Play store.

You're much more likely to find a fake Fortnite app by searching for "fortnite" on Google Play than going to fortnite.com where the only downloads are legitimate.

"Untrusted sources" has always been a bit of a scare tactic to get people not to use Google's competitors, like Amazon.

This probably will rub Google the wrong way.. I wonder how many millions they will lose out on because of this.

Maybe they should introduce some special reduced fee teirs for the ultra high volume customers, as a precaution against this becoming a trend.

On the other hand fortnight is probably the only app where it's users want it so bad they will be willing to do just about any procedure to get it on the phones. Everything else has competitors on the Play store.

A precaution against this becoming a trend? There is no trend, there has been a massively huge tsunami wave and it's already passed through, and now the "Play Store" is a barren wasteland of utter crap loaded with ads and sending as much data as they managed to cajole you into agreeing for to a bunch of third parties. But every app is free!

30% was a lazy choice to begin with, and look at what it got them. It's not even the huge tax, the fact that your app will show up alongside a bunch of Fordnite and Fnortnite scams would be enough to scare me away.

Hopefully Google won't start disallowing the sideloading of apps- I could very much see them doing this given the recent European fines.

Google punished again for having a more open platform. With this and EU's lawsuit attacking Google for allowing other OEMs to sell Android with conditions, Google's incentive is to copy Apple and lock everything down and make it all proprietary.

That’s not what happened. Google was punished for not allowing manufacturers to sell separate products that were Android forks if they sold official Google versions of Android.

On the scale of 1-10 of openness, that’s a -100.

I've had to disinfect so many of my friends computers because they downloaded VLC media player from a website that looks darn close to something "official" but wasn't. Even with the one-time perms to allow this specific app to be installed from outside the GPS I can definitely see this being a headache for not only Google because of the high profile and popularity of this game but also Epic. Good luck to everyone involved.

I feel like part of the 30% tax that app stores extract is based on how easy it is for users to simply buy what they want with money that's probably already in their account. Most of the money that I've spent on apple and google apps comes from gift cards. If I had fortnite on my android phone, and considered making an impulse buy, and was required to put in credit card info, I might reconsider the purchase.

Tim Sweeney has always been a very outspoken critic of app stores. He's famously rattled his saber about the Windows Store every chance he gets, despite the fact that outside Store installations will never realistically, ever go away.

So an opposition to the Play Store on moral grounds is pretty much what I'd expect here from him. I'm guessing the 30% cut is just the cash incentive he needed to convince the rest of his team that this was the right way to go.

That would explay why his company has its own app store that until recently also was 70/30 split (now 88/12)

This is how it should be.

Monopolized software distribution platform is bad for so many reasons.

And for anyone claiming that this is bad for security, blame Google and Apple who don't support the other way of secure software distribution and try to lock-in to their proprietary locked-in platform for the greed.

Also, Don't use Android or iPhone in the first place because it's so restricted, unsecure, and cannot be trusted one bit.

It sounds like you're not familiar with Android. It was always possible, but it's easier since Oreo.

https://developer.android.com/distribute/marketing-tools/alt... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_app_stores

Is there not a FOSS store on Android that provides app signing and doesn't charge anything? This is an opportunity for Fortnite's creators to create their own store which then installs their app.

Well the FOSS store is a FOSS store because it only has FOSS. They have an emphasis on reproducible builds so you know what you are getting.

https://f-droid.org

Yeah this is great, thanks.

This is kind of what they did, "Epic Launcher" installs it and keeps it up to date. It seems to be something like steam/origin/etc but for android

Such a store would either require that the developer pay for payment processing and hosting themselves, or would have to charge in order to cover those costs.

I support Epic Games's decision. 30% is insanity, and Google Play needs to face regulatory scrutiny from government.

Between this and their main rival reaching a trillion dollar valuation would someone explain to me what the EU fine was for?

I am not a lawyer, but I believe anti-trust lawsuits often revolve around what the average consumer can do/is aware of.

In Europe, Android dominates the smartphone OS market with ~75% market share and most come pre-bundled with Google software. With names like "messages", "photos", or "calendar" it's not really clear that these are Google products or that they can be changed. You basically end up with most of that market share using Google software without even understanding that they have a choice.

I believe the logic behind the fine was very similar to the USA vs Microsoft anti trust suit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...).

To put it in perspective though, the fine Google received was less than 2 weeks worth of revenue and will probably be lowered if they appeal. It's not really as big a deal as the media made it out to be.

I'm not saying I agree with the fine, but I do understand how, in a certain light, the EU see Google's practice as a bit monopolistic.

It's closer to a 50/50 split than you make it sound, and the difference between this the microsoft case is that Windows had >95% of the market and not to mention that OEMs don't need google's permission to roll out their own OS (see the Chinese mobile market) also consumers would need those fundamental apps to make the phone usable similar to the apps that come with iOS which contrary to Android's are the defaults forever and can't be replaced.

> It's closer to a 50/50 split than you make it sound

No, Android OS is at 74.2% of the EU market.

It's closer to 50/50 in the US, but in the EU and worldwide Android dominates the market and will probably continue to rise as Huawei continues to expand.

Multiple sources for the 74.2% number:

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe

https://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-wire/ios-and-android-ga...

There seems to be a myth going around on HN that having a dominating market position is some sort of necessary and sufficient condition to an anti-trust violation. That is not the case.

The EU generally considers 40% a dominant market share so even if there were a 50/50 split, it wouldn't matter.

Anticompetitive behavior in forcing OEMs to bundle other Google Apps if they wanted access to the Play Store and Play Services, which has nothing to do with the other two things you mentioned.

They weren't forcing anyone to sign the contracts, see Fire devices and the Chinese mobile market for google free Android examples. Also you're making sound like they were "bundling" trash, the apps are useful and of higher quality than most apps on the platform, not mention that they make Android phones comparable to iPhones.

"They weren't forcing anyone to sign the contracts"

This is very, very disingenuous. If the only way to have a successful product in the American and European markets is to have the Play Store, then yes, there is some level of force there.

"see Fire devices and the Chinese mobile market for google free Android examples."

Google wasn't allowed in China to begin with, so that's a very poor comparison. And the Fire Android devices flopped pretty badly.

"Also you're making sound like they were "bundling" trash, the apps are useful and of higher quality than most apps on the platform"

Completely irrelevant; they're still forcing the bundling.

Not buttering the right toast.

what with ios?

If you could have done this on iOS, would you have?

Yes.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-fortn...

God, I hate unnecessarily obscure headlines like this.

We changed it.

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