Author: Michael Crider / Source: howtogeek.com
Android gamers have been itching to get their hands on Fortnite ever since the game made the jump to iOS back in April. But the developer has now confirmed that to actually play it, they’ll have to go outside Google’s Play Store distribution service. That’s going to create a lot of problems.
Fortnite Battle Royale has become a gaming sensation, a smash hit on every major gaming platform and earning an estimated $1 billion despite its free-to-play model. It’s a perfect storm of popularity, thanks to an appealing mix of conventional shooter mechanics, Minecraft-style building, and the multiplayer format du juor: a 100-player free-for-all where the last one standing wins. It’s beaten out earlier competitors in the “battle royale” genre with a cartoony art style and consistent additions to weapons and gameplay mechanics. The game dominates social media on YouTube and Twitch, and it’s so popular with teenagers and school-age children that the iOS version caused a brief panic among teachers and parents when it bowed earlier this year, a la Pokemon Go.
In short, Fortnite is simply the Big Game of the moment. Whether or not it can maintain its wrecking ball momentum has yet to be seen, but when it finally arrives on Android it will instantly be played by millions of people at the very least. In that context, developer Epic’s decision to offer the game as a direct download on the web instead of a conventional installation via the Google Play Store platform is a huge problem. The news was confirmed by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, and the download and installation process was tested by EuroGamer.
Android apps can be installed either via the Play Store, which is essentially the same as Apple’s App Store and offers a huge amount of built-in protection and security, or they can be installed in a process called side-loading. This manual installation is more or less the same as downloading a program off the web to your Windows desktop and installing it yourself, and it comes with the same risks. Advanced users know to be wary of unverified downloads from third-party sources. Inexperienced users, notably children, do not, opening them up to rogue installations of malware, spyware, and other generally undesirable stuff.
Fortnite developer Epic Games will ask players to go through this process in…
The post Fortnite For Android Skips The Play Store, And That’s A Huge Security Risk appeared first on FeedBox.