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This has never been a secret.

Google literally spent most of a decade preaching that the "freedom" their platform afforded to sideload software was a major competitive advantage, and then attacked a developer who was making use of that freedom to make a large profit without giving Google a cut.

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But you could still do it, you just get a lot of warnings that you probably shouldn't unless you know what you're doing. AFAIK I can't do that on my iPad at all.

Also, with Fortnite specifically, they proved the worries right immediately: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanwhitwam/2018/08/25/epic-gam...

Epic is obviously exaggerating. Android lets you enable local app installs in like 2 clicks including a safety message. Complaining about this is like complaining about windows UAT (I expect Epic will complain about that next).

There were a lot of complaints about UAT when it was first introduced, claiming it was too confusing for casual users. It was a factor in the huge unpopularity of Vista.

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