• The Epic Games Store will be pre-installed on Telefónica Android devices.
• This will affect the UK, Spain, Germany and Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America.
• This is the latest salvo in Epic’s fight against Google and Apple.

Epic Games has been fighting both Google and Apple in courts for years now over the fees that the latter two charge on Google Play and the App Store respectively. The latest volley in this situation happened today with the announcement that the Epic Games Store will be pre-installed on new phones, albeit only Android devices from one telecommunications provider.

“Telefónica, one of the largest telecommunications service providers in the world, and Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, today announced a long term partnership to make Fortnite and the Epic Games Store more accessible on millions of Telefónica Android devices. As a first step in this partnership, the Epic Games Store will now be pre-installed on all new compatible Android devices on the Telefónica network in Spain, UK, Germany and Spanish-speaking Latam. Players will now be able to more easily download Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League Sideswipe as well as third party games in the future. This is just the beginning, and over the next year the companies plan to expand the partnership and bring more benefits to mobile players across the Telefónica network,” the announcement reads.

By going this route, Epic Games avoids fees associated with the Google Play store and allows customers to access its content without needing to jump through any hoops, such as side loading apps.

Though, this hasn’t been an issue, at least on Android, for a few months now. In August of this year, Android users worldwide already got access to the store along with iOS users in the EU. This new deal with Telefónica, then, is just another way for Epic Games to get people onto its store / into Fortnite faster.

The announcement goes on to mention that Telefónica has 392 customers, which is a massive base of customers. Even if a fraction of those will ever receive an Android device with the Epic Games Store pre-installed, it’s still a huge win for the Fortnite maker.

Pre-installed software on any device is usually referred to as “bloatware”, and for good reason. Many see any piece of software they didn’t intentionally install as a nuisance, so we can at least hope that the Epic Games software will be able to be uninstalled on these phones.

For its part, Epic Games promises “a more competitive ecosystem for Android players” and expanding the collaboration with Telefónica “to bring even more benefits to players”. Only time will tell if this is true, or just marketing fluff to accompany the announcement.

Regardless of your staff on this situation and feelings about the Epic Games Store coming pre-loaded on any devices, we still want to mention good deals when we see them, so check out our guide below on getting a decent chunk of change back when buying premium currencies on the store over the next month: