Fortnite developer Epic Games fined in record $520 million child privacy settlement, 'dark practices'

In two separate settlements, the Federal Trade Commission will fine Epic Games, the developer of the hugely popular battle royale game Fortnite, a total of $520 million related to child privacy concerns and the agency called it a "misleading credit card charge." practices."

Chesnot / Contributor I Getty Images Player playing Fortnite in 2018 in Paris.

The record settlements were announced on Monday.

“No developer makes a game with the intention of ending up here,” Epic wrote in a blog post about the two settlements.

Since at least 2017, according to the FTC, Epic Games has violated a children's privacy law by employing a host of digital practices that allow customers, or unwitting children, to accidentally purchase things in its Epic Games Store or on Fortnite, and difficult to undo or mitigate the issue, despite complaints.

Founded in 1998, Epic Games is a Cary, NC-based game developer that introduced Fortnite to the world in 2017. The game was a smash hit, attracting 200 million players in just a few months, by Insider. Epic has also developed games like Gears of War.

"These enforcement actions are a clear signal to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these illegal practices," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in the agency's statement.

The FTC is the authority responsible for laws designed to protect customers. The agency says Epic Games has made it easy for kids (and people in general) to buy things from Fortnite or the company's store without parental consent. He called these tactics "dark patterns", which is also a general term for software that deceives users.

"Fortnite's counter-intuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button layout resulted in players incurring unwanted charges for pressing a single button," the agency wrote, adding that the company tested and then added features to make it harder to cancel a purchase. or get a refund.

"Epic ignored over a million user complaints and repeated employee concerns that a 'huge' number of users were being wrongly charged," the FTC claimed. Finally, the agency said that if customers dispute the charges, their accounts will be banned.

Epic Games said its new policy will now only deactivate accounts in cases of fraud. The company said it will now request consent to save payment information and added additional checks to confirm a player's purchase after the fact, among other mitigation efforts, as noted in its blog post.

The FTC order will require the company to pay $245 million for this issue in order to go to certain customers affected by the issue it described. At this link you can sign up to be notified if the website is live and see if you qualify.

The claim for payment was filed with the administrative court. The second was It was returned to the Department of Justice and then filed in District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina

The order fined the company for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which was passed in 1998. The law requires parental consent to collect the personal information of children. children under 13, which the FTC says Epic did not do with Fortnite.

The FTC also said that the default...