Sean Hollister

Grant says that on the web, websites are identified to cause harm before those warning screens show up (as opposed to Google’s Unknown Sources flow, where the assumption is that everything unknown is a risk.)

He’s also explaining that streaming games are highly reliant on a good internet connection because they can’t buffer for a couple of seconds like a Netflix video and latency is so important for responsiveness.

(I’ve personally covered cloud gaming for over a decade, so I can confirm that’s true; they also depend on the distance between you and the cloud gaming server, your Wi-Fi, etc. There’s a lot of potential friction.)

“The bottom line is, there are many ways to play Fortnite on mobile devices, right?”

“You can play Fortnite on cloud gaming with no download, right? Just launch it and play.” Mach suggests there’s the Galaxy Store, Xbox Cloud Gaming, GeForce Now, and Amazon, as well as downloads.

Grant keeps trying to suggest there aren’t “many” but rather “several” or “a couple.” But Epic’s own website fortnite.com/mobile says, “There are many ways to play Fortnite on mobile devices!” and the jury just got to see that for themselves.

We’re going on a short break now.

If I had to guess, we’ll come back to how Epic tipped off Microsoft gaming boss Phil Spencer about Project Liberty, but not others, because it seems self-serving? We’ll see.

See image below. Today, Grant admits that warnings can be helpful.

Grant says he doesn’t know if partner support was “crucial,” as the blog post claims, “but it was very helpful,” he says.

In an old deposition, Grant was asked if Epic compensated Google for any of its services. He had a very diplomatic way of saying “not directly,” saying Fortnite fixes would lead to changes in Unreal Engine that would provide better performance for all mobile games that use the Unreal Engine.

He concluded: “I think it was a win-win as to compensation.”

(Big picture: Google is arguing it helped launch the game, only to watch Fortnite skip its store, twice, to avoid paying Google its cut of the proceeds.)

With no hesitation whatsoever, Grant replied: “Yes.”

Of course, Google has him dead to rights in internal communications. In 2020, Grant wrote: “The needle we are trying to thread is to not fall foul of any agreements we have with Google, other than as needed for Project Liberty.”

(Google has counterclaims against Epic for breaching its contract.)

But the company’s Project Liberty never targeted Samsung, Weissinger just admitted on the stand — after also admitting that, yes, Samsung does things that the Coalition for App Fairness rejects.

“You do not believe that Samsung abides by the principles for app fairness that are on your coalition’s website?” asked Google’s attorney.

“I agree with your statement,” he replied.

“Epic has a special deal with Samsung Galaxy, correct?” Correct.

“Epic chose not to focus Project Liberty on Samsung, correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct,” said Weissinger.

Epic’s attorney got a chance to redirect, and Weissinger started off weak, suggesting that Samsung are “exceptional promotional partners that really go above and beyond.”

Epic attorney Moskowitz tried again. “Does Samsung have the same reach and control and power as Google?”

“No it does not,” said Weissinger.

Weissinger just did that today on the stand. “Yes, it was our idea,” he said, confirming that Epic paid a consultant $100,000 to start the lobbying group, and that there were no other founding members.

In 2020, the “Coalition” told press that Epic Games, Spotify, Basecamp, Match Group, Tile, Blix, and Deezer were all “founding members” of the organization, but Google just asked if any of them were indeed founding members.

“If you’re referring to the incorporation, no they were not,” said Weissinger.

Here’s how my request for comment went in 2021, in case you’re curious:

Epic estimated that 37 percent of users gave up between “Clicked Download on Web” and opening the Epic Games app — but 40 percent dropped off after opening the Epic Games app and before passing a minimum spec check.

Weissinger says 40 percent is not bigger than 37 percent “in terms of absolute players,” suggesting more players were dissuaded by the former, but had to admit that 40 is bigger than 37 “as a number.”

Update: Weissinger has now explained that the 40 percent was of the remaining players after 37 percent of those attempting to download had already been dissuaded.

Only 260M phones met Fortnite’s minimum system requirements, compared to billions for competitors, the document showed.

“Download and Patching Process remains a challenge on mobile due to Fortnite Download Size relative to competitors,” reads another line from Epic’s document, showing that Fortnite’s first download took over 14 minutes, compared to under a minute for PUBG and Call of Duty: Mobile.

In a February 2020 internal document, Epic wrote that “mobile drives new accounts,” with 38 percent of daily new accounts in 2019 coming from a mobile platform.

But it also wrote that “mobile retention is low compared to other platforms,” with iOS retaining just 6 percent of players and Android retaining just 4 percent after the 30-day mark, compared to 16 percent on PS4, 11 percent on Xbox One, and 21 percent on Nintendo Switch.

And as we’ve already covered, players weren’t buying their V-Bucks on Android but, rather, on console. Just 0.7 percent of purchases were on Android as of 2018. Players who were introduced to Fortnite on PS4 bought 94.2 percent of their V-Bucks on PS4, but only 21.6 percent of those who started with Android bought their V-Bucks there. (34.8 percent of them bought them on PS4. Over 5 percent bought them on iOS.)

These all predate Fortnite’s launch on the Play Store — they’d have been from the sideloading days.