The app for the world-famous game Fortnite has been removed from the iOS App Store and Google Play Store for violating the rules.
At first, it seemed to be a problem only with the Apple App Store, due to the fact that Epic Games, the company that developed the game, had introduced a direct payment system that optionally allowed users not to use Apple’s own payment systems.
This constitutes a violation of the rules of the App Store, so the removal was inevitable.
But something similar also happened on Google’s Play Store, since the direct payment function also allows users not to use Google Pay.
This thing, however, despite the blatant violation of the rules, seems less understandable on Google’s Play Store, since the Google/Android environment has always been considered the most open, or at least less self-referential, compared to Apple.
In this regard, Google has stated:
“The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play”.
The problem would therefore not be an incompatibility of the new version of Fortnite with Android at all, but only with the Google Play Store, which is the main source of app distribution for Android.
Android is the most popular operating system for smartphones in the world, as it is used by more than 70% of the devices in circulation.
The game is still downloadable on Android using the Epic Games app or the Samsung Galaxy Store on Samsung devices, while it is still impossible to download on iPhone and iPad.
The comment by Anthony Pompliano
Commenting on what happened, Anthony Pompliano wrote on Twitter:
“Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their mobile app stores today.
The future will be decentralized.
Not because it is cool, but because it will be necessary”.
Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their mobile app stores today.
The future will be decentralized.
Not because it is cool, but because it will be necessary.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) August 14, 2020
Epic Games had many contrasts with the Apple and Google app stores, and today’s conflict only concerns the possibility for users to choose alternative payment methods to those actually imposed by the two giants.
An open, and perhaps decentralized, distribution platform would perhaps be more suited to a theoretically open system like Android, and would allow developers to avoid having to depend on rules imposed by a single company that, despite having developed the operating system, has always wanted to distribute it for free as if it were a truly public and open platform.
On the other hand, it’s also true that these limitations don’t specifically concern Android, but the app distribution platform owned by Google. Yet precisely because the web giant literally dominates the Android app market, it’s almost as if it were the official distribution platform.
