Fortnite makers Epic may regret decision to skip Google Play Store
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[SOUND] So let's talk about Fortnite.
The blockbuster battle royale game hit a snag early on when it launched on Android just two days after it became available.
Google found a vulnerability with the installer that you really need to download to get the game.
You can't actually get it on Google Play.
And so Epic, the developer behind Fortnite, patched up the game, but Secure experts are warning that this is really just the tip of the iceberg for potential security problems for the game.
Yeah, like who's gonna go and find the update when there's another problem found.
This is very complicated for consumers who just want to play.
And just as a bit of background Epic wanted to get around Google plays requirement to offer up a 30% cut to Google.
For any kind of purchases.
So they decided to just go and force players to download the installer and do what's known as sideloading a game.
Which generally is bad security practice.
Yeah.
You can't do that on iPhone and
Androids do let you do that, Android phones do, but it's not really recommended.
A lot of the them, a lot of the programs that you side load tend to be malware.
And so, a lot of us were saying one, this is just bad practice.
Getting people thinking that sideloading a game is good.
But beyond that, they sort of looked at the number of games, or the number of knockoff Fortnite games that are out there that you can sideload.
And most of them are spammy, have more ads.
They're not terrible, but most the experts say that this is just the start.
You'll see more complex and sophisticated malware.
Develop down the line.
And the fact that you're doing this through this installer makes it a bit more dangerous.
Yeah, it's easy to fall prey to a fake Fortnite, even in the, what if the main Google Play store even has now a bad one?
Their own fake, yeah exactly.
Yeah, so it's just messy.
I don't like it.
And exactly, some of the games, they work exactly like Fortnite but they just have heavy doses of ads.
Mm-hm.
So basically someone is taking a ripped off version of it.
That's not the worst thing in the world, they're not compromising your security.
But you could imagine other versions of the game could include malware that's far more dangerous.
Mm-hm.
