Fortnite developer slams Google in battle over security flaw

The companies’ spat came after Epic Games sidestepped Google’s app store, instead releasing Fortnite to Android phone users from its own website.

The move prevented Google from taking a potentially lucrative 30 per cent cut of revenue from Fortnite’s in-game purchases but it also left users vulnerable to security problems.

Google discovered the potentially devastating flaw in the Fortnite launcher on August 16, and privately alerted Epic Games who responded that their team was “working around the clock to fix it”.

The security flaw would have allowed “an app on the device to hijack the Fortnite Installer to instead install a fake (app) with any permissions that would normally require user disclosure”.

Epic Games released a fix for the vulnerability on August 17 but also asked Google to remain silent about the problem for 90 days “so our users have time to patch their devices”.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about the video game Fortnite

But the tech giant did not agree and publicised it after a fix had been available for a week “in line with Google’s standard disclosure practices,” an engineer said.

Epic Games chief executive Tim Sweeney has now fired back at Google in a statement, saying the company put Fortnite players at risk by exposing its game’s security flaw.

“It was irresponsible of Google to publicly disclose the technical details of the flaw so quickly while many installations had not yet been updated and were still vulnerable,” Mr Sweeney said.

“A company as powerful as Google should practice more responsible disclosure timing than this and not endanger users in the course of its counter-PR efforts against Epic’s distribution of Fortnite outside of Google Play.”

Mr Sweeney said the Epic Games engineer had requested longer secrecy “at my urging” and, despite the current war of words, the developer “genuinely appreciated” Google’s efforts to perform a security check on Fortnite’s app.

Epic Games’ decision to release Fortnite outside Google’s Play Store is likely to cost the tech giant millions of dollars, as rival Apple had already collected more than $73 million since March from its 30 per cent take of in-game purchases, according to Sensor Tower.

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