"Say nothing till it ships"

Mar 24, 2022

On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 10:28 AM, Tim Sweeney wrote:

(confidential)

Arjan, Daniel, Josh,

What is the feasibility of launching Fortnite on Android as a stand-alone installable program, avoiding Google Play and their 30% tax? Perhaps 1-2 months after iOS launch, after we’re able to scale to handle the full volume of mobile users.

Do all Android devices support turning on side-loading? Could we launch with the game and a simple auto-updater (not the launcher, just an updated with no UI but a progress bar and cancel button)?

I’m thinking Fortnite.com could have the same “Download” button on Android as on PC/Mac that downloads the installer, and the landing page for the download button could have instructions for turning on side-loading.

This could get us to having a multiplatform (PC/Mac/Android) ecosystem much faster than other avenues. Fortnite provides nearly unlimited free UA sufficient to overcome the friction of installing it.

Step 2, negotiate free bundling deals with all the major smartphone manufacturers.

Step 3, turn the auto-updater into a full version of the launcher on Android, so that Diesel will launch across all 3 platforms.

This is exactly the process Tencent followed to bypass Google Play with WeChat, which they soon opened up as a game distribution platform. The sooner we can free ourselves from the App Store distribution monopolies, the better, and the Fortnite launch on Android seems to me the one moment in time when we have sufficient gamer excitement to launch successfully and build up a huge gamer base.

Tim

On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 2:36 PM, Tim Sweeney wrote:

Here is our official plan for communicating with Google about bypassing the Google Play Store:

SAY NOTHING TILL IT SHIPS

Re Apple, there’s no way for a non-developer non-enterprise user to install software outside of the App Store, so I’m not sure there’s a role for the mini-launcher there yet. If we want a multi-product gateway on iOS, we could build the mini-launcher into all of our games (underneath a top-level Epic icon in the menus) but the install links would need to redirect to the App Store. This is how WeChat handles game installation on iOS, unlike Android.

Mark, we’ll need a plan for secretly negotiating bundle deals with Android OEMs with a major presence outside of China, including Samsung and LG. Will need to be a coordinated international effort and needs to stay below the radar. We can offer each one some really cool branded bling exclusive to users who play Fortnite on their platform.

Tim

[This document is from Epic v. Apple (2021).]

Link to original tweet

Further reading from Sean Hollister for The Verge: The Epic v. Google lawsuit finally makes sense

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