FTC orders Epic to pay $245 million in refunds to Fortnite players
2 min readFTC orders Epic to pay $245 million in refunds to Fortnite players
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FTC orders Epic to pay $245 million in refunds to Fortnite players
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a resolution today (March 15) requiring Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, to pay consumers $245 million in refunds for Epic’s use of dark patterns.
Behaviors that mislead players into unwanted consumption and children’s consumption without parental authorization.
In December last year, the FTC asked “Fortress Night” to pay $520 million as a settlement plan for deliberately guiding players to unnecessary consumption and invasion of privacy.
Among them are divided into $275 million in fines for violating children’s privacy and $245 million in refunds for deliberately inducing players to spend. The resolution finalized today is part of the previous settlement agreement.
According to the FTC, “Epic employs a variety of design techniques known as ‘black boxing’ in order to engage consumers of all ages in involuntary game consumption. Fortnite’s perverse, inconsistent, and confusing pages This resulted in players making non-essential purchases due to a single purchase option.
Epic also made it possible for kids to play Fortnite without parental consent.” According to the FTC’s complaint, Epic also locked some players’ accounts. To retaliate against players who raise consumption objections.
Epic Games also issued a statement detailing the adjustments made to address underage players and microtransactions, such as the previously launched Epic client child account feature.
The purchase method of “Fortress Night” has also been replaced from the previous one-click purchase to “press and hold to buy”.
Epic also extended the time to cancel the purchase of accessories to 24 hours to reduce unexpected consumption, and popped up a confirmation message when players equip newly purchased accessories, and the refund qualification will be canceled after confirmation.
By default, chat for underage players is set to “none” by default, profile details are set to hidden by default, and teaming is set to “invitation only” by default.
Today’s FTC announcement should be good news for game consumers. Now that Epic Games can no longer rely on black-box operations to make money, I hope it can devote its energy to making “Fortress Night” a game that players are willing to spend money on their own initiative.
