What you need to know
- Epic and Telefónica announced a new partnership that will see the Epic Game Store pre-loaded onto every device in its cell service.
- Users in Spain, the U.K., Germany, Mexico, and Spanish-speaking LATAM countries will have third-party access to Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League Sideswipe.
- Epic states this will encourage users to be exposed to more choices aside from the "conventional app marketplaces."
- Epic and Google have had a long and storied history together in court as the former submitted lawsuits for anti-competitive practices.
Epic Games, creators of Fortnite, have announced a major partnership that will bring its games to "millions" of users.
Today (Dec 12), Epic detailed its new partnership with Telefónica, a global cellular carrier with strong ties to areas within Europe. Epic states this is the beginning of a "long term" partnership with the service provider as its Game Store will be pre-loaded onto every Android phone it offers consumers.
Telefónica's Director of Partnerships and Devices, Lorena Itziar Senador-Gómez Lázaro stated, "with this collaboration with Epic Games we strengthen our relationship and go one step further in delivering high-quality, accessible, and innovative digital experiences to our customers."
Epic calls this a "strategic alliance" as it looks to create a more "competitive ecosystem for Android players." Its statement adds that consumers will now be exposed to more choices beyond the "conventional app marketplaces."
While Telefónica is quite widespread across Europe, Epic states its pre-loaded app store will concern Spain, the U.K., Germany, Mexico, and Spanish-speaking LATAM on its network.
Several of the games Android users leveraging Telefónica's cell service will find are Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Rocket League Sideswipe.
The Epic Games Store will now be preinstalled on Telefónica Android devices in Spain, UK, Germany, Mexico and Spanish-speaking Latam. This will enable players to bypass many of Google’s misleading scare screens and get to playing Fortnite faster. We’re looking to partner with…December 12, 2024
The companies are reportedly not content with stopping here as 2025 will hold additional ventures into expanded partnerships. Epic and Telefónica will seek to "bring more benefits" to its Android players across its cellular network.
What's interesting about this new pre-load partnership with Telefónica is that Epic tried to do this with OnePlus and LG, but Google stopped it. Google was reportedly afraid that Epic would "install and update multiple games with a silent install bypassing the Google Play Store."
When Epic highlights "conventional app marketplaces," we can't help but look to its storied history with Google. Epic sued Google in 2020 after its popular game, Fortnite, was axed from the Play Store after an update gave players a way to buy its virtual currency, V-Bucks, directly through the developer. This infringed on Google's store policy, where it takes a 15% fee for all purchases for apps listed.
Things then evolved into a series of lawsuits, where Epic won a major trial in antitrust court against Google where a judge found the latter guilty of an illegal monopoly in the Play Store. Epic has continued to fight tech companies — think Google and Samsung — over anti-competitive practices when it comes to third-party developers.
Where we're at now is the Epic Game Store's arrival for download on Android. Epic is more interested in delivering a "fair" experience for games and developers, instead of being content with Google's large 15% to 30% fee during transactions. Moreover, Epic stated it would keep the same 88/12 split for purchases that it has on its PC client. Developers would retain 88% of a user's purchase, with the remaining 12% falling into Epic's hands.
