Epic’s legal battle against Google over app Store dominance was a years-long process, and Epic’s recent win has laid the groundwork for competitors to come in with their own offerings, leading to today’s global Android launch of the Skich Store. The Skich Store is an alternative app store targeting mobile gamers. Although it feels like more of a hub, as you’re not actually downloading games directly from the Skich Store. Instead, it’s more or less compiling games that you can play on mobile. For example, League of Legends: Wild Rift. It then redirects you to the Play Store to complete the download.
Think of it sort of like an aggregator that points you to the content you want. This will change eventually. But, for now, apps are still downloaded and installed through the Play Store. It’s also more than this. The Skich Store is filled with social features that gamers will likely find appealing. For instance, you have the ability to invite friends and see when friends started playing a game.
The Skich Store also acts as a game launcher for Android
Say you want a central place to see all of your games and launch them. Devices like the ASUS ROG phones and the REDMAGIC Astra gaming tablet provide this natively. The Armoury Crate app, as well as REDMAGIC’s Game Space, will let you add and see all the games installed on your device. So you can launch them all from one central spot. The Skich Store can do this, too.
After you install games, if they don’t automatically show up in the Skich Store app, you can add those games. This could be useful in saving you time. More importantly, it lets you separate your games from the rest of your apps in a sense. While those games will still show up in the app drawer, you can avoid scrolling through every app by simply going to the Skich Store. Then you’ll have all of your games right there. Simply find the game you want to play and launch it.
Apps will eventually be direct downloads
While the apps don’t download directly from the Skich Store yet, they will eventually. That’s the plan. According to Skich, the team is beginning to onboard developers from its waitlist, and this will be followed by replacing the Google Play redirects with direct download access. When these redirects are replaced, tapping on the get game button, assuming Skich sticks with that label for it, will download the game right then and there.
That being said, the full replacement of the redirects will take a little time. Skich states that it has to wait for the latest antitrust court ruling to take effect. Once this happens, Skich will be outfitting its entire game catalog with direct downloads, at which point the redirects will be gone and Skich will be a fully alternative option to the Play Store. The appeals court has recently paused these changes, so it’s unclear how long it will take for them to be put in place.
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