It's a pretty big vulnerability when you allow the malicious intent of one app to escalate to an actual malicious capability so I don't think you're accurately recalling the issue in question.

Which is to say, there's the possibility for minor problems that should be fixed, but it's far from the "Epic is terribly insecure, trust the malware-ridden Play Store instead" rhetoric we got from this particularly aggressive media campaign.

Did p0 say that anywhere?

Given that if I search fortnite on the play store, I get a special warning message that it can't be downloaded on play (which was added specifically to prevent fortnite clones), I'm less than convinced that there was a unified campaign by Google to undermine epic, as you seem to be suggesting.

So, yes is what your saying. It was vulnerable code discovered by Project Zero.

And when discovered, did Project Zero follow their published process for disclosure to both Epic and the general public?