In a move that’s bound to surprise many, Epic Games has announced that it will not be distributing Fortnite for Android through the Google Play Store. Instead, the company plans on rolling out an installer which can be downloaded from the official website of the game.

Epic Games is going to benefit in two ways from this. Firstly, CEO Tim Sweeney believes this will allow the company to “have a direct relationship” with its consumers. Secondly, it will allow the company to bypass the 30 percent cut which otherwise it would have had to share with Google for IAPs if it released the game on the Play Store.

“The 30 percent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” Sweeney says. “There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers.”

The CEO says that the 30 percent share taken by Google is higher than what it should get for distributing of its game, payment processing, and more. Epic Games is now “intimately familiar with these costs” after distributing Fortnite on Mac and PC directly.

Epic Games has also dismissed rumors of Fortnite for Android launching exclusively on the Galaxy Note 9. The game will make its way to high-end Android devices that are capable of running it without any stability or performance issues.

While Epic Games might have wanted to distribute Fortnite through its own installer on the iPhone as well, it could not do this due to a restriction from Apple which prevents installing apps from sources other than the App Store. Fortnite is already massively popular on the iPhone where it has generated over $100 million in revenue.

The move from Epic Games might just set a precedent that other game developers might follow with their big releases.

What do you think about Epic Games launching Fortnite for Android through its own installer and skipping the Play Store?