Epic Games to pay over $500 million to settle Fortnite FTC case By Tom West, 20 Dec 2022 FollowtopicsFortniteEpic GamesID@XboxLocal MultiplayerThird Person ShooterTom West Epic Games has agreed to pay over $500 million to settle charges levied by the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations surrounding privacy violations and tricking users into making unwanted charges.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that it had "secured agreements" from Fortnite developer Epic Games to pay a record-breaking $520 million over allegations "the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and deployed design tricks, known as dark patterns, to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases."Epic Games and FTC agree on a settlement for Fortnite legal battleIn a complaint filed in federal court, the FTC alleged that Epic violated COPPA by collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 who played Fortnite without obtaining their parents' consent. The complaint also alleged that Epic had also violated the FTC's "prohibition against unfair practices" by allowing teens and children to use both real-time voice and text-based chat communications by default. According to the FTC, some of the developer's employees had expressed concerns about the default settings as far back as 2017, urging the company to make sure its users opt-in to the communications services. While a button was eventually added to switch off voice chat after numerous reports of harassment, the FTC says that Epic made it difficult to find.In response to the COPPA violation complaint, a federal court order stipulates that Epic must pay the record-breaking sum of $275 million, and prohibits Epic from enabling voice and text communications for children and teens unless parents (of users under 13) or teenage users (or their parents) provide their affirmative consent through a privacy setting." Epic will also need to delete any personal information it collected from users affected by the COPPA violation. In the future, regular independent audits will need to be carried out to ensure that Epic is following a comprehensive privacy program.The FTC's second complaint concerned the use of "dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorised charges without any parental involvement." The complaint says that Fortnite's "counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration" has led its players to receive unwanted charges due to the single-button press nature of the in-game store's purchasable items. According to the FTC, players could be charged when attempting to "wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting to preview an item." This apparently led to "hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorised charges for consumers." Much the same as the claims made by the FTC against Amazon, Apple, and Google, Epic's use of single-click V-Bucks purchasing allowed children to buy the in-game currency without requiring parental consent. Furthermore, the company then allegedly "locked the accounts of customers who disputed unauthorised charges with their credit card companies." The locked accounts lost access to any content that had been purchased on them, which "can total thousands of dollars." The complaint says that "even when Epic agreed to unlock an account, consumers were warned that they could be banned for life if they disputed any future charges." The company reportedly ignored more than a million complaints and employee concerns that "huge" numbers of accounts were being wrongfully charged. The FTC alleged that when Epic imposed changes to fix the issue, it only made things worse due to having "purposefully obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find."In light of the complaints, the FTC has put forward an administrative order that requires Epic to pay $245 million to FTC for "unlawful billing practices," which will be used to "refund consumers." The company will also be prohibited from using dark patterns to charge users without "affirmative" consent, and barred from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts when disputing unauthorised charges."No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here. The video game industry is a place of fast-moving innovation, where player expectations are high and new ideas are paramount," Epic said in its own statement. "Statutes written decades ago don’t specify how gaming ecosystems should operate. The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved, and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough. We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players."The company's announcement also details the measures it's taken to improve its sales and refund practices and policies since the FTC's allegations were made. What do you think about this news? Let us know down below!More Fortnite stories: Fortnite’s creative lead retires after 7 years driving Epic’s battle bus The best free Xbox games (August 2023) Xbox Cloud Gaming smuggles Fortnite back onto iOS Assassin's Creed's Ezio and Eivor join Fortnite Fortnite raises a total $144 million for Ukraine relief Industry News Written by Tom WestTom has been playing video games since he was old enough to hold a controller, experimenting with a number of systems until he eventually fell in love with Xbox. With a passion for the platform, he decided to make a career out of it, and now happily spends his days writing about that which he loves. If he’s not hunting for Xbox achievements, you’ll likely find him somewhere in The Elder Scrolls Online or fighting for survival in Battlefield.