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.

Comments

This actually changed situation for the better

[Luckyo]

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?

Re: This actually changed situation for the better

[alvinrod]

I can see why they would never in a million years do such a thing, but they could just provide a link to The site where Epic has put the installer.

The real answer is that a lot of what goes on at Google is done by algorithms that are uncaring about things such as this. Eventually enough of a stink is made or someone higher up sees the bad press and human intervention is made. Ask anyone who has ever had to deal without Google support and they will tell you that this kind of thing is par for the course and has been for years. The human intervention always comes off as hamfisted because the person making the decision has little idea of what is actually going on and no one can really fill them in since an algorithm has been steering the ship up to this point. Maybe the algorithm gets tweaked a little bit in response, but probably not.

Re:This actually changed situation for the better

[pots]

Priorities? You mentioned two things there, one super easy: block all instances of "Alex Jones," and one super hard: block all malware. Even if what you said is true (it's not), that still would have nothing to do with priorities.

Re:Epic is dumb

[Zocalo]

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.

Wait a microfortnight...

[tepples]

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?

Thank you Google

[fred6666]

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.