Confirmed: Fortnite on Android will drive its bus past Google’s 30% cut [Updated]

Enlarge / Fortnite's season five outfits and cosmetics. If XDA's report is accurate, Epic Games won't have to give up 30 percent of Android purchases of these outfits to Google. (credit: Epic Games)

Update 2, August 3, 1:25pm ET: As Epic prepares to roll Fortnite's first Android version out in the very near future, the game maker has responded to rumors and leaks by confirming that this version will entirely bypass the Google Play app store. Fortnite players on Android will have to take the uncommon step of going straight to a website, downloading an "APK" file, and opening up Android's permissions to approve the game's install.

Epic's FAQ on the matter is currently hosted exclusively at Eurogamer, as written by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, and the developer has apparently written its own questions to answer. The most intriguing one, "Is this just a way for Epic to keep the 30 percent that Google would take if you were on Play," receives a frank answer:

Avoiding the 30 percent "store tax" is a part of Epic's motivation. It's a high cost in a world where game developers' 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games. And it's disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We're intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac.

An additional question doubles down on Epic wanting to reclaim that 30 percent fee for the sake of development costs and server overhead-though it does not address Google Play's guarantees of malware scanning for any app downloaded. (Sweeney wouldn't have to look hard to find exceptions to Play's malware-free promises, but he doesn't mention any here.)

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