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Google Play Shows Warning To Anyone Searching For Fortnite APKs (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson quotes a report from BetaNews: The arrival of Fortnite on Android has not only been eagerly awaited, but also steeped in controversy. In addition to making the game a Samsung exclusive (for a few days, anyway), Epic Games decided to bypass Google Play and host APK downloads on its own servers. But this isn't going to stop people looking for Fortnite in the Play Store. Google is well aware of this, and that there is the potential for fake, scam apps to appear, tricking users into downloading something malicious. As such, the company is taking action, and is showing a warning to anyone who searches for Fortnite in Google Play. Conduct a search for Fortnite in Google's app store and you'll be greeted by a message that reads "Fortnite Battle Royale by Epic Games, Inc is not available on Google Play." Searchers are also advised that Fortnite rival PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) is available to download.
Play store has been utterly flooded with fake Fortnite installers since iphone version release. Everything from malware and (before play store ban) miners to just ad serving garbage.
Google didn't give a shit. For months. This garbage even popped up on "recommended" list for me a few times.
And now that Epic actually stated that it isn't publishing on play store, Google finally put a warning on that garbage. Good job Epic for forcing Google to act in some manner, and what the fuck took you so long, oh benevolent overlords at Google?
It's not about the value of letting those apps in but the cost of keeping those apps out.
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No, it's actually about the value of an app store. I, as a user, have no use for an app store if I still have to worry about bogus apps and malware. If I have to deal with that shit, I can as well forgo the appstore. It is basically the main asset such a place is for the user.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
the whole point is that if developers start bypassing the store, telling users to enable installing apps from unknown sources and download apps from here and there, as Epic Games is doing here, then they're at risk of not giving Google a cut.
With as much "fake apps and malware" as the Google Play Store hosts, why do we keep going along with Google's narrative that sticking to the store benefits users in some way?
Android does allow for other sites to exist. You could always find a different one. Personally, I think there is a lot of value in a highly curated store that keeps more apps out than it lets in.
I think that there is a lot of cost in policing submissions and too many submissions to ever keep up with, but this stems from wanting to have the most apps. It used to be that the main metric that Apple and Google used in their dick waving contest to measure their stores was the number of apps. It was any easy number to throw out that the press would regurgitate and that the public would swallow.
There are more than enough apps now, so I think the focus should be quality. Just curate the best ten apps for any given purpose or category and only show me those. Such a model would also make it far easier to take a smaller cut, since there is no need to review thousands upon thousands of new apps.
You mean the model where developers keep developing clones of the same apps over and over because the new shit gets promoted? That's the model you want?
If it's the ten best apps that do a thing, then you can win either by making a better app that does a thing, OR by making an app that does a new thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If your app is such a malware target for your users that other stores have to warn people, then maybe you're doing something wrong, Epic.
Cheap-ass dip-shits will never get a dime from me.
It's more like the people that will blow $100s of their (parents') money on a free game to buy skins and dances are the type of people that are more likely to fall for malware and tricks.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I think you have that backwards - if you've produced a game that is so popular that malware writers are trying to piggyback on your success to deploy some malware, then it's pretty much a given that it's going to be a financially successful game, which was kind of the point of producing it in the first place. If anything, it's the users that are "doing something wrong" here. Epic has a successful game that is in demand so has opted to handle their own distribution rather than pay Google a cut, so the game simply isn't available on the Google Play store and anything that claims to be so is 100% guaranteed to be pushing ads, malware, cryptominers, or worse. All Google is doing here (finally - this fake-version crap has been going on for ages) is informing users who are unaware of Epic's distribution model - and thus perhaps more likely to be hoodwinked into installing something nasty - that they can't find the app on the store and if they install anything that claims to be Fortnite from the store it's going to be malware.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
What is the value of the Play Store if it lets those apps in?
Because apps then don't have to pass some arbitrary barrier to entry set by facelesscorp. If you want diamonds you have to dig through the shit.
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No, it's actually about the value of an app store. I, as a user, have no use for an app store if I still have to worry about bogus apps and malware. If I have to deal with that shit, I can as well forgo the appstore. It is basically the main asset such a place is for the user.
Depends, are you going to go looking for a specific thing and check out the apps or just download and install whatever shit is on the new today tabs?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Just curate the best ten apps for any given purpose or category and only show me those.
Let's explore the feasibility of "curat[ing] the best ten apps for any given purpose or category". To start with: What are the ten best side-scrolling platformer video games of all time, what is number 11, and on what basis do you conclude that each of numbers 1 through 10 beats number 11?
Apple users seem content on giving tons of money to Apple. And Apple devs seem content on lubing it up. What's the problem.
The hilarious/sad thing is Fortnite can't go around the Apple store, so they are content with Apple getting 30% of their sales, but screw Google getting any! Even though Android is a far larger platform.
Is an application still "malware" if it has the name "Fortnite" for a legitimate reason, such as a unit conversion calculator centered around the furlong-firkin-fortnight system whose source code is published?
For doing the right thing here. And I mean not locking down the Play Store, allowing 3rd party sources. Google could easily (ab)use its dominant position in the smartphone OS market to force Epic to go through its Play Store and forfeit 30% of their revenues. But they didn't. Thank you for not being Apple.
Ironically though I've found you get better apps on Android than you do on the even more tightly controlled iOS.
An example would be apps for learning English as a foreign language at beginner level. There are a few good ones on Android, but iOS is just full of total crapware put together by amateurs, or outright malware. The only decent stuff is for more advanced students on iOS.
I'm not sure why that is, but it's interesting that the more controlled app store is also the worst.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
> You mean the model where developers keep developing clones of the same
> apps over and over because the new shit gets promoted? That's the model you want?
Are you talking about app stores, or *everything in the world*?
Because it sounds like you're talking about cars, hair dryiers, "New, Improved" loops, and every other thing for sale on the planet earth.
> so they are content with Apple getting 30% of their sales From what I understand if an company wants to skirt the 30% tax they can offer the app for free and then make the user go online to the companies website, create a login, pay for the app on the website and then log into the app with the paid account. The hitch is they company cannot allow the user to do this from inside the app (this includes using the in app web view). Any purchase / transaction made in the app (either native UI or web view) is subject to the 30% tax. This is how it was explained to me a couple of years ago, not sure if it is the same any more.
I'm not sure why that is, but it's interesting that the more controlled app store is also the worst.
It's pretty straightforward IMO. The tight control drives off developers, there are more users on Android, and Android uses a more common software development language than iOS. Apple doesn't care how much app diversity there is so long as people keep paying for the apps they curate, so they have no motivation to "fix" the system. From their viewpoint, it's fixed already.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the only valueof an app store is the $ cut to the owners.
EFF should sue google for the same treatment for fdroid and all others refusing the play store too
Still less annoying than all the pro-Trump and anti-Trump idiots who post comments not only in completely unrelated threads, but in all the threads.
#DeleteFacebook
what a great solution!
imagine if they would just remove those bad apps, luckily we get an alert we can safely ignore instead.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Nope. Last Unreal game I played and enjoyed was Rainbow Six in 2002.
In fact, I just looked through the whole list of Unreal games listed on Wikipedia, and I've come to the conclusion I shouldn't ever bother with them. It's primariy FPS's which I don't play, and games made by devs who are more concerned with graphics than gameplay.
The difference is that the app store catalogs get ever bigger, while stores only reserve some parts of the inventory for new whiz bang, while dedicating large parts of the inventory to old standby brands that everyone knows and wants.
If the demo version and the paid version are separate apps with separate listings in Google Play Store, the problem becomes one of having to fit both the demo version and the paid version on the user's phone until the user has exported all data from the demo version to the paid version. In addition, the user has to download data for the paid version that the user has already downloaded for the demo version, which may cost several dollars per GB on cellular or satellite Internet. Structuring registration as a one-time IAP avoids this storage and bandwidth crunch, especially for a game that may have 1 GB or more of assets.