Epic Games has decided that the Fortnite Android app will be available directly on its site. Alert for malware danger
Fortnite for Android will not be available on the Google Play Store but can be downloaded directly from the site of Epic Games, the software house that developed the game.
The decision has created quite a stir: Epic Games is the first major company to leave the Play Store circuit and decide to publish an application for Android directly on its website. As explained by the CEO of the company, the reasons for this choice are twofold: on the one hand the need to establish a direct relationship with its users, which is difficult to do using a platform like Google Play Store, on the other hand the costs of managing the application. Google retains 30% of the profits coming from the applications on the Play Store, a cost that Epic Games considers excessive and that would affect the quality of the game.
This choice will allow Epic Games to focus more on the development of the Fortnite application for Android, but it could also create many inconveniences to the users, especially in terms of cybersecurity. Hackers and scammers could take advantage of the situation to develop fake Fortnite apps to carry viruses and malware. The most at risk are young people, who are less familiar with recognizing the dangers of the web.
Why Fortnite for Android will not be present on the Google Play Store
As anticipated in recent days, the video game will be for the first period an exclusive for Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and will be officially announced on August 9. All other users will have to wait a few weeks or months to be able to download the Fortnite application on their Android smartphones. But the news of the last hours concerns the platform on which the video game will be available: Epic Games will allow to download the application directly from its website and will not publish Fortnite on the Play Store. Money is the main reason why Fortnite for Android won't be available for download from Google's store.
In fact, as stated by the CEO of Epic Games himself, Google retains 30% of the profits generated by the apps on the Play Store, while software houses must bear the entire cost of management and development of the applications. For an application such as Fortnite, the management costs are very high and having to give 30% of the profits to Google the gain would be minimal.
Where to download Fortnite for Android
Epic Games will publish the Fortnite application on a third-party store managed directly by the software house. This is made possible by the open source nature of Android that allows you to download apps even from stores other than the Play Store. But with all the risks involved. In fact, very often in third-party stores lurk malicious applications that hide viruses and malware that infect smartphones.
Fortnite for Android, the dangers for smartphone security
For hackers and scammers it is a situation not to be missed. When the Fortnite app for Android is officially available on the Epic Games website, there will be millions of players using search engines to download Fortnite for free. This is where hackers and scammers will come into action, trying to build websites similar to the Epic Games one and inviting users to download their own version of the video game. The only difference is that, compared to the original version, there will be viruses and malware inside.
The biggest danger is mainly teenagers who do not have great computer skills and are not able to recognize dangerous sites. When they go to download the APK (the equivalent of the .exe file for Windows) of Fortnite from who knows what online store, they will find their smartphone infected and unusable. Epic Games has a very difficult task: to fight hackers in order not to create too many problems for its users.