It took Fortnite a while to show up on Android after making its mobile debut on iOS, and it turned out there was a big reason for that. Epic Games opted to actually circumvent the whole Google Play system and launch its own bootable APK file, so it could absorb all the income from that version of the game. Now, Epic Games is implying a bit of saltiness of Google’s part, after the company disclosed a security vulnerability in Epic’s APK before the company could finish repairing it.
This happened over the weekend of August 25, 2018, as Google shared the news that the Fortnite APK for Android had a hole in its security that could allow people to get into Epic Games’ custom installer and shoot malware through it into peoples’ phones. Epic’s Tim Sweeny said that the company had already made an update to fix it, but had asked Google to hold off a bit on announcing the problem until more users had installed the update.
Sweeny said that the move to disclose the problem as quickly as it did, which appears to be a Google policy, was “irresponsible,” and created “an unnecessary risk for Android users in order to score cheap PR points.” The BBC points out that Google has also been criticized by companies such as Microsoft for its policy in the past. The logic being that if Google announces problems too early, this could make more bad actors aware of a problem before it’s all the way fixed.
Source: BBC