American publisher and developer Epic Games announced an agreement with US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under which it will pay more than $0.5 billion to settle charges against it.
First, Epic Games will pay the FTC $275 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act: a Fortnite developer collected personal data from users under the age of 13 without the knowledge and consent of their parents.
In addition, due to the default voice and text chat, children and teenagers in Fortnite face bullying, threats, harassment, and potentially traumatic topics like suicide.
$275 million is the largest ever fine for violating FTC rules
Secondly, Epic Games will pay another $245 million for the use of tricks or non-intuitive interface elements (so-called dark patterns) that encourage players to make unintentional purchases.
The developer deliberately made it difficult to find the function to cancel the transaction and return funds, and also blocked the accounts of players who disputed purchases through the bank. All these tricks brought Epic “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
$245M to be used to refund players affected by Epic’s actions
In response to the FTC’s claims, Fortnite has a clear question about saving payment information, a mechanic to hold down a button to confirm a purchase, and a default high privacy setting for players under 18.
Also Epic Games Unlocked “thousands of accounts”disabled due to chargeback messages and introduced restricted accounts for minors (including disabled voice and text chat).
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