Fortnite snubs Google Play
Read a really timely article about how Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite have decided to bypass the Android App Store aka Google Play when it comes to releasing the Android version of this teen-addicting Battle Royale-Fest.
This is the first example I’ve read about of a major games manufacturer bypassing what might previously have been regarded as a commercially essential marketplace for their product.
They have done so because the 30% commission that Google Play takes from purchases and In-App Purchases is, as Epic Games’ chief executive Tim Sweeney said is“disproportionate” to the contribution Google make. This is a fair point, as in the case of Google Play, they are essentially being paid simply to stock games, rather than to promote them.
However, it might appear from this article, that this kind of decision would only be open to the very biggest, and most successful gaming properties, such as the seemingly unassailable Fortnite. The reason being that such is the word-of-mouth and viral nature of that games’ success, that customers would be comfortable enough downloading it from an outside source, and do not require any promotion from Google either by way of featuring in the charts, or on their coveted front pages. To a large extent this is true but perhaps only for now….
Also, there is no mention of Epic Games looking to pass on this 30% margin onto the consumers themselves by way of, say, reduced V-Bucks purchases, or some other way. No, it appears that they’re simply looking to trouser the cash themselves to continue to increase the $100M per week that is relentlessly disappearing from hapless parent’s debit cards across the globe.
This move is, however, v symptomatic of the beginning of the slow but inexorable decline of the dominant “closed” platforms like Steam & Google Play, and what is about to become the growing dominance of decentralised ecosystems which solve the current broken system — within the games industry in this instance -where you have millions of apps, yet only a handful of gatekeepers controlling their distribution.
I am lucky enough to be involved with a decentralised startup, called Catalyst, - a digital content protocol whereby creators can have their games distributed by millions of influencers and consumers, all of whom will share the 30% levied by closed platforms in a peer-to-peer hosted ecosystem that truly liberates games, and also potentially music, movies, and even physical goods.
So instead of millions of apps and a handful of marketplaces, it aims to create millions of marketplaces, each showcasing dozens of apps. At its’ core are strong incentives to recommend content, and being paid in cryptos for hosting it.
The 30% that Google Play routinely levies is far better being shared out to actually get a fairer spread of games, not just from mega corporations like Epic, but from the thousands of small and mid-sized developers that drive the true creativity that drives the games industry. These are the developers that struggle to make ends meet and they are the creators that platforms like Steam don’t much care for.
Let’s not forget that we wouldn’t even have Fortnite, had it not been for the Japanese film Battle Royale.
Which influenced Brendan Greene to create his “Battle Royale” mod for Arma 2 which would in turn not have been possible had not mid-sized developer BlueHole supported it’s growth into PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, or PUBG.
These smaller developers are the fortunate ones, but all will have struggled in the past, and their tribulations would have been all the more challenging, knowing that they couldn’t even enter the party without losing 30% of all their revenue to a gatekeeper that doesn’t care what you play, merely that you play and spend, whatever that means for the struggling creatives that drive all the major successes.
Epic Games has made a move that is the ‘tip of the spear’. After all, if they and their billions are fed up with the closed gatekeepers of the incumbent hegemony, then think how the smaller devs feel, as, unlike Epic, have to burn all their profits coughing up for advertising, just to find audiences in the first place.
Decentralised marketplaces will change all of that, when and only when, they grow through substantial incentives which are built in to make it worthwhile for influencers and consumers to share content directly with each other, couple with simple-to-use technology that seamlessly facilitates person-to-person commerce with micro-transactions.
Now that’s a use case for gamers to get excited about. So excited that they might even consider snubbing Fortnite and trying something else for a while.
But until then, perhaps it’s unlikely.
Not when you can run around dressed as a slavering hamburger-head.
