Epic Games Kicks Off a Brilliantly Timed Assault on Apple and Google

Epic Games, maker of both Fortnite and the most popular game engine in the industry, was ready for this. The company knew exactly what it was doing when it activated a direct payment system last week, sidestepping platform operators Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) subsidiary Google. What happened next was entirely predictable: The wildly popular battle royale game was booted off both the iOS App Store and Android's Google Play.