Epic is freaking exhausting. After literally years of suing every mobile-affiliated company it could think of, including Google, Apple, and Samsung, claiming that users should have the right to install whatever software (and whatever app store) they want, it’s now pre-loading its own Epic Games Store and access to the ubiquitous Fortnite onto carrier phones.
The Epic Games Store will be pre-loaded onto Android phones sold on Telefónica for customers in the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America. The press release announcement didn’t specify which countries, but Telefónica and its subsidiaries and partners currently operate in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Telefónica claims 392 million total customers.
According to the press release, gamers will “be able to more easily download Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe as well as third party games in the future.” Which at least implies that the full Fortnite game itself — a 15GB package on my phone right now — won’t be fully pre-installed right from the get-go.
This is, obviously, a win for Epic. Getting the smash hit battle royale Fortnite onto phones, and doing so without going through the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store and cutting them into the deal for microtransaction revenue, was the entire point of its initial temper tantrum lawsuit in 2020. Now with a little extra wheeling and dealing, not only will Epic get Fortnite onto millions of new devices, it’ll do so without having to deal with side-loading.
In fact, it’ll get the Epic Games Store installed on those phones without even having to ask permission from the people who buy the phones in the first place. Yay?
This deal isn’t really out of the ordinary. After all, Epic had a similar sweetheart package with Samsung once upon a time, openly advertising that you could get Fortnite on Samsung phones via the Galaxy Store even if it wasn’t available on Google Play. That was before Epic threw another temper tantrum — it’s suing Samsung now.
But I feel it incumbent to remind millions of Android phone users and daily Fortnite players — two groups that I’m part of, I’ll point out, I’m level 34 on the current battle pass — that Epic wants you to think it’s not like all the other international megacorps.
Remember that Epic “trolled” Apple with a parody of its famous 1984 ad, inviting players of a free video game to “join the fight” against Apple. “Join the fight” between a company worth $32 billion and a company worth $3.7 trillion, arguing over who gets to keep $3 from your $10 V-Bucks purchase. Ugh.
And Epic started this fight for freedom allegedly on behalf of phone users, whom it said deserved the right to install whatever software they wanted outside of an app store ecosystem. An argument that it didn’t make for game consoles like the Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch, which have essentially the same setup and the same profit sharing.
SONY
I wonder if that lack of enthusiasm for suing Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo has anything to do with Epic’s very close relationship with those companies. Epic has teamed up to sell Fortnite bundles with all three of those consoles, and it’s apparently okie dokie with the profit-splitting arrangement for V-Bucks and other in-game items so long as you’re holding a controller instead of a phone.
I wonder if Epic has done the math, calculated its odds of forcing console makers to open up to unlimited third party game stores, and decided it isn’t worth risking losing months or years of access to those platforms while the dust settles in court.
Here’s another thing I wonder. Android allows you to uninstall apps that are pre-loaded onto your phone… at least some of the time. I can uninstall Amazon Shopping from my Samsung phone, but some apps like Google’s Chrome I can only “disable,” and they’ll be back in a second or two if I re-enable them. Other apps, like the wholly useless Samsung Bixby Vision, can’t even be disabled.
The Epic Games Store and Fortnite are certainly something that a lot of people want on their phones. But a lot of people don’t, or at least don’t care either way. Pre-installing a game store that’s available as a separate manual download on a phone’s limited storage is, by definition, bloatware.
When Epic has its Games Store and access to Fortnite pre-loaded on millions of phones across the world, will it remember its claim to be fighting for the rights of players, and allow them to banish these apps from the phones they bought? Or will it instead decide that it’s just as essential as Bixby Vision, and the “uninstall” button will be conspicuously absent?
