Fortnite for Android Blocks Rooted Users from Playing

The official release of Fortnite for Android is nearly here. And with it, we learn of a new limitation the game will have: it will not run on certain rooted phones.

One XDA-Developer user with access to the game tested it out on various devices. When they attempted to run the game on a rooted OnePlus 6, they were met with a warning sign, stating that rooted phones were not allowed, and attempting to bypass this could result in a ban.

Not all phones seem to fall under this classification, however. Two other users used an Essential and a Google Pixel 2 XL, both rooted, and they could access the game just fine. This led to speculation that rooting the phone alone doesn't trigger the warning, but a system modification made through rooting was the source of the SafetyNet check failing.

Rooting a phone is the practice of bypassing factory set restrictions on phone settings, allowing the user to modify the phone's layout, operating system, and apps beyond that of what a standard user could achieve. Rooted phones are also commonly used to run cheating software for various mobile games. To combat this, apps like Pokemon Go would not allow rooted users to run the app.

With Epic Games actively choosing to not host the Fortnite game on the Google Play Store, many users have expressed a concern for virus-hidden imitations and scams.