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Comment by SirensOfTitan | Hacker News Reader

I don't blame Epic at all for avoiding the Play store. I find it patently unacceptable that two large tech companies now act as gatekeepers for software releases. Sure, it provides extra security, but at a heavy cost. Between Facebook, Google, and Apple the vast majority of the public's digital speech (software and written language) are filtered through large corporations with immense power and few regulations. This feels very, very scary to me.

It looks like the Fortnite APK is 1.88GB. I don't have familiarity with the Android platform, can you update via patches (over a full binary download)? If updates are anywhere near that size, a 7 day disclosure after patch is patently irresponsible (play store or not). This smells like a cheap PR play by Google.

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I blame them. This is the world we live in. Google was nice enough not to lock down their ecosystem (like Apple), so in a way they're being sensitive to your concerns. Epic should not be punishing Google for being permissive. This way of distribution should be the exceptional case; for when Google is being unreasonable (eg. censorship), or for more advanced situations. This isn't the ideal, general purpose channel for releasing software. That's what the app store is for. Epic is putting their users at risk to save some bucks.

On a side note, I don't love Google's rules as I understand them. They seem to punish prompt action and honest communication in some cases (eg. this one). I think you should just get the 90 days if they're willing to allow it. Of course, this is always their call.

EDIT: Other users are saying the short deadline is because the public will be made aware of an exploit, due to existence of a patch. I did not think of that initially, but it does make sense

> to save some bucks.

Epic is also saving their users some bucks. I'm not so sure that users hate the tradeoff.

Hey, you're probably right. I'm not so sure the user should be making that decision though. Users would probably do away with strong passwords and automatic updates too, if they had the option. It's not their call, and shouldn't be.

I don't blame Epic at all for avoiding the Play store. I find it patently unacceptable that two large tech companies now act as gatekeepers for software releases.

More like 5 - Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony all control what software goes on their platform either digitally through their console app stores or physically since all media has to have keys from the console makers to run.

Sure, it provides extra security, but at a heavy cost.

Seeing how the last 30+ years of personal computer use has played out, the vast majoriyy of users should probably be using locked down devices.

And Epic provided the perfect example of why app developers should be forced into a strict sandbox. I need my phone to always work it’s much easier for me (but not most people) to recover from a virus/malware/ransomware on my computer than a hypothetical one on my phone.

Why isn't Epic at fault for dishing out insecurity on a platform that contain's a user's everything? If instead it Google wasn't in the picture at all, but an unknown hacker who disclosed vulnerability, would it still make sense to divert blame from Epic? I personally would still blame Epic.

Similarly, I also wouldn't care if a random hacker or reputable firm disclosed Target's vulnerabilities when they put millions of customers at risk. I'd blame Target by a big margin.

The Fortnite Installer APK, the part with the security flaw, seems to be about 4MB?

The Fornite APK itself is also <100MB.

Play Store does incremental updates on the background.

> Sure, it provides extra security, but at a heavy cost.

There is nothing stopping Google and Apple charging a fixed fee for the cost of verifying the quality of submissions to the App store. The 30% is just pure rent-seeking, and frankly now it's monopolistic on Google's side.

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