Epic Games just gave a great lesson, showing that we could very well do without the Play Store and experience success, his game has been downloaded 15 million times on Android, without being available on the Play Store.
We were talking about it a few days ago, Epic Games had made a very bold bet for a mobile game publisher, namely to launch its Fortnite game on Android, but without going through the Google Play Store. The goal is not to pay back the 30% of commissions charged for in-app purchases, that all applications on the Play Store must pay.
A bold bet from Fortnite, widely won, which is already emulated
Admit that the bet was risky because, without the Play Store in the world of mobile, it is an act that is on the edge of the Kamikaze, the risk being never reach the eyes of mobile users and never know, nor the ounce of a hope of success.
Obviously, the strategy of Epic Games has been skilfully thought upstream and even without the Play Store the figures of Fortnite are impressive. The publisher explains, ” On August 9, we launched the Fortnite Android beta on some of our Samsung partners’ devices. A few days later, we launched invitations to a subset of Android device owners from various handset manufacturers. We learned a lot from the beta in terms of performance, security, device compatibility and the provision of Fortnite on Android via Fortnite Installer. “
Continuing: ” In the first 21 days following the launch of Fortnite on Android, the interest has been very keen, with more than 23 million players entering our Android beta and more than 15 million players having installed our APK. While we are in a phase of invitation only for Android, our conversion of players invited to play is similar to that of iOS beta .
15 million players in just three weeks, no effect Google!
In three weeks, Fortnite has seen its community grow by 15 million people, an impressive figure that other games can boast, except that the royal battle has not had the thumbs of Google and managed his own audience, from the official Fortnite website. It seems that this event did not go unnoticed because giants are now wondering what they do on the Play Store or the App Store and why they continue to pay 30% of commissions, while they already have tens of millions of users. Recently Netflix and Spotify have followed this trend and are moving away from download platforms.
It seems that the question that many application publishers were asking, without finding the courage to test, has just found an answer: Can we do without the window of Google or Apple?