American publisher and developer Epic games announced a deal with United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC), under which it will pay more than $0.5 billion to settle the 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 their parents’ knowledge and consent.
Also, 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 fine ever for violating FTC rules
Secondly, Epic Games will pay an additional $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 the funds, and also blocked the accounts of players who disputed purchases through the bank. All these tricks brought Epic “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
$245 million to be used to pay back players affected by Epic’s stock
In response to the FTC’s claims, Fortnite has a clear question about saving payment information, a mechanism for holding down a button to confirm a purchase, and a default high privacy setting for players under 18.
Epic Games also unlocked “thousands of accounts”disabled due to chargeback messages and introduced confidential accounts for minors (including voice and text chat disabled).
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