>“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortn...
Then Epic attempted to cut deals with device makers to preinstall their App Store on devices.
>Epic claims that Google forced phone manufacturer OnePlus to break off a deal that would have seen a special Fortnite launcher preinstalled on OnePlus phones — and demanded that another Android phonemaker, LG, abandon any plans to do the same.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21368395/fortnite-epic-ga...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...
They've updated the rules. You will need to sign every app on Play Store with the certificate provided by Google. Just like on App Store.
You MUST register a namespace (com.mycompany.MyApp) and get a it a certificate from them.
For paid - that's 1YR for your app to run. For free - that's 1week for the cert.
There's no way running YOUR code on YOUR device without it being signed by Apple (or jailbreaking).
* you don’t need Google to sign every app. You can allow external apks and even keep Play monitoring for malicious apps.
* you can add another App Store.
* the fact you can say a user there’s another purchase way and it is relevant information.
Android feels like a democratic country vs Apple’s meritocracy.
The past few years I’ve switched back to Apple. But I still miss the ability to just compile something and run it without it being expired after a week (Apple’s free developer certs expires after a week)