Google wins victory royale over Epic Games, snags Fortnite for Google Play

Enlarge / Artist's conception of the experience of installing Fortnite on Android before today.

It's now been over 18 months since Epic Games shook up the mobile-gaming market by refusing to release the Android version of Fortnite: Battle Royale on the Google Play store. At the time, Epic was explicit that avoiding Google's 30 percent "store tax" was part of its motivation for the decision.

And it seemed to be a successful decision for Epic, which managed to rack up 15 million Android downloads for Fortnite in just 21 days without Google Play's help. But now Epic has given up its fight against the platform and made Fortnite available on the Google Play store after all.

The reason for the move, the company says in a statement provided to Ars Technica, is because of a "basic realization":

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