Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney attacks Google over ‘Fortnite’ bug

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic
Games.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images for
Samsung

• The CEO of Epic Games, the game studio that makes
  battle-royale game “Fortnite,” has accused Google of
  irresponsibly exposing a flaw in the game’s security to score
  “cheap PR points.”
• “Fortnite” came to Android phones this summer, and Epic
  Games chose not to host it through the Google Play app store to
  avoid giving Google a 30% cut of its sales.
• A Google engineer publicly identified a weakness in the
  security of “Fortnite” for Android.
• Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said revealing the flaw so
  quickly did nothing but give hackers a chance to exploit
  it.

CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney has spent days tweeting his
discontent after a Google
engineer exposed a security flaw in the code for the Android
version of “Fortnite.”

Responding to people on Twitter, Sweeney spent the weekend and
Monday pointing out that Google was irresponsible in how quickly
it revealed the flaw.

He also said that Epic Games had asked Google to hold off on
publishing until it had completed an upgrade which patched up the
bug, but Google refused.

Sweeney added that Google’s rapid publishing of the flaw was an
attempt to “score cheap PR points.”

He even said the decision to announce the bug put more gamers at
risk, as it could have alerted hackers to the opportunity to hack
those who hadn’t yet received the update.

But that wasn’t the end of his complaints. He was also
disappointed at how much information Google published about the
security flaw. Sweeney said the company could have alerted the
public to the weakness without releasing specific details about
the code.

When a beta version of “Fortnite” launched on Android this
summer, Epic Games made the
bold decision to skip the Google Play store. Instead, players
download the game directly from the game’s website. Sweeney told
Business Insider that this was because the 30% store tax Google
charges is disproportionate.

Business Insider has contacted Google for comment.