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Epic Games creator of the video game Fortnite, to pay a total of $520 million over FTC allegations

Ezekiel_

Banned


Fortnite Video Game Maker Epic Games to Pay More Than Half a Billion Dollars over FTC Allegations of Privacy Violations and Unwanted Charges

Epic will pay a $275 million penalty for violating children’s privacy law, change default privacy settings, and pay $245 million in refunds for tricking users into making unwanted charges

The Federal Trade Commission has secured agreements requiring Epic Games, Inc., creator of the popular video game Fortnite, to pay a total of $520 million in relief 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.

The FTC’s action against Epic involves two separate record-breaking settlements. As part of a proposed federal court order filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, Epic will pay a $275 million monetary penalty for violating the COPPA Rule—the largest penalty ever obtained for violating an FTC rule. Additionally, in a first-of-its-kind provision, Epic will be required to adopt strong privacy default settings for children and teens, ensuring that voice and text communications are turned off by default. Under a separate proposed administrative order, Epic will pay $245 million to refund consumers for its dark patterns and billing practices, which is the FTC’s largest refund amount in a gaming case, and its largest administrative order in history. [...]
 
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Nvzman

Member
That's honestly kind of bizarre to me considering Fortnite has probably some of the most pro-consumer practices in its genre. Despite being free-to-play, you earn vbucks for free in free tiers, you can refund purchases in the store, both of vbucks and actual cosmetics I believe, and the pricing in general isn't very expensive. It's better and more forgiving than most $60/$70 paid games with battle pass + point store shit. I wonder if this is because of its rating, because if CoD was rated T or E I think it would definitely deserve this degree of scrutiny more, that game is significantly more predatory in its attempts to get you to buy shit, even down to its matchmaking algorithm.
 

Pejo

Gold Member
Donald Glover Reaction GIF


Maybe that's one less timed exclusivity deal they can afford.
 

dem

Member
That's honestly kind of bizarre to me considering Fortnite has probably some of the most pro-consumer practices in its genre. Despite being free-to-play, you earn vbucks for free in free tiers, you can refund purchases in the store, both of vbucks and actual cosmetics I believe, and the pricing in general isn't very expensive. It's better and more forgiving than most $60/$70 paid games with battle pass + point store shit. I wonder if this is because of its rating, because if CoD was rated T or E I think it would definitely deserve this degree of scrutiny more, that game is significantly more predatory in its attempts to get you to buy shit, even down to its matchmaking algorithm.

This.

My kid has mistakenly bought things in fortnite and the return was a breeze. Its built into the game.
 

Ezekiel_

Banned
What's "dark patterns"?

From the link :
Illegal Dark Patterns
In a separate administrative complaint, the FTC alleged that Epic used dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement. The complaint alleged that Epic:

Used dark patterns to trick users into making purchases: The company has deployed a variety of dark patterns aimed at getting consumers of all ages to make unintended in-game purchases. Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button. For example, players could be charged while attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting simply to preview an item. These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers.

Charged account holders without authorization: Children and other users who play Fortnite can purchase in-game content such as cosmetics and battle passes using Fortnite’s V-Bucks. Up until 2018, Epic allowed children to purchase V-Bucks by simply pressing buttons without requiring any parental or card holder action or consent. Some parents complained that their children had racked up hundreds of dollars in charges before they realized Epic had charged their credit card without their consent. The FTC has brought similar claims against companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Google for billing consumers millions of dollars for in-app purchases made by children while playing mobile app games without obtaining their parents’ consent.

Blocked access to purchased content: The FTC alleged that Epic locked the accounts of customers who disputed unauthorized charges with their credit card companies. Consumers whose accounts have been locked lose access to all the content they have purchased, which can total thousands of dollars. Even when Epic agreed to unlock an account, consumers were warned that they could be banned for life if they disputed any future charges.

Epic ignored more than one million user complaints and repeated employee concerns that “huge” numbers of users were being wrongfully charged. In fact, Epic’s changes only made the problem worse, the FTC alleged. Using internal testing, Epic purposefully obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find.

As part of the proposed administrative order with the FTC over the company’s unlawful billing practices, Epic must pay $245 million, which will be used to provide refunds to consumers. In addition, the order prohibits Epic from charging consumers through the use of dark patterns or from otherwise charging consumers without obtaining their affirmative consent. The order also bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
From the link :
Thanks.

Never played Fortnite. Even if I did, thank god I dont do mtx nor have my CC on file. What a scummy game. For all the self serving PR Tim Sweeney does trying to make it sound like Epic is the most consumer friendly game company out there, you sure wont see Tim Sweeney's face responding to this in a video.
 

Lupin3

Targeting terrorists with a D-Pad
This.

My kid has mistakenly bought things in fortnite and the return was a breeze. Its built into the game.

Did they change anything? My son did purchase stuff by mistake early on, and if you didn't stay on the same page you couldn't return the item unless you spent 1 of 3 (per year) allocated return tokens. I remember you bought stuff instantly by pressing a button. No "are you sure", no "press and hold to buy". Though you did have to press and hold to return said item. Those were some shitty practices.
 

kikkis

Member
Why not go after MS and Sony for their store refund policies? Compared to refunding in fortnite, MS/Sony stores are like sith level dark patterns.
 

Holammer

Member


full twitter thread
Epic signed a settlement with the FTC covering their concerns with Fortnite item shop features, refunds, and parental permissions. Here's detail on how we've been evolving Fortnite since 2017, as well as thoughts all game developers should consider.
Developers should dig into the topic, as this settlement reflects state of the art American regulatory practice, for example now applying principles similar to the UK Age-Appropriate Design Code to voice chat defaults.
In-app purchasing is also a hot topic, with rigorous expectations of "Affirmative Express Consent" for purchases made both in real money and paid virtual currency.

Great to see deceptive business practices like dark patterns getting talked about. We've all run into them at some point, like when you try to unsubscribe from a paid subscription.
Some asshole made the process difficult on purpose in a way only Douglas Adams could have dreamt up. When you finally figure it out, "we're sad to see you go", offer a questionnaire and a discount on your next subscription.
 

dem

Member
I found Microsoft far more scummy with gamepass removals.

My kid unknowingly bought games that we had installed from gamepass, and then got removed from the service. I emailed Microsoft for a refund and they refused.

I've since removed my credit card from my microsoft account.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
It is a two way street.

Companies can be scummy for allowing purchase be made too easy by kids.

But also its the parents responsibility to not have a credit card linked to an account for easy buying. It doesn't matter if its one click or 3 clicks to buy mtx. Dont have your CC online, or do what every site does not saving credentials, it asks for a password etc.... I dont even have my CC info saved on websites. For me I just dont want it there in case my account gets hacked. So if I can do it, so can any parents with kids with itchy trigger fingers. There's way to prevent kids from doing this. Now if your kid is that dickish going into your wallet when you're not looking and inputting your CC info manually to buy something that's another level of idiocy. But for a lot of these mass spending sprees by kids it seems the parent left their CC info on file with no parental controls.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
fines towards these companies should be larger. epic is a very valuable company, fining them 500 million is nothing. for a corproation at their stature they should be paying 50 billion
 
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nikolino840

Member
How the software knows who's playing? I think very few games chat is off by default...but i think you can set directly with the console idk
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
The real question is why would a Sony subsidiary go after Epic? 🤔

We need proper regulation and guidance for developers on mtx. Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Valve need to agree to a standard that self regulates until governments catch up.
 

jakinov

Member
Thanks.

Never played Fortnite. Even if I did, thank god I dont do mtx nor have my CC on file. What a scummy game. For all the self serving PR Tim Sweeney does trying to make it sound like Epic is the most consumer friendly game company out there, you sure wont see Tim Sweeney's face responding to this in a video.
They’ve actually already addressed many of these issues months back. I’m unsure if they knew this would happen back then or not.

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/...ite-purchase-cancellation-and-social-settings
 

jakinov

Member
It should all go to the consumers. Not less than half.
The half that goes to consumers goes to refunds related to the “dark patterns”. The other half is fined for violating COPPA. They are being fined for two separate things. One is like give back the money you owe, the other is here’s some punishment for not following government rules.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The half that goes to consumers goes to refunds related to the “dark patterns”. The other half is fined for violating COPPA. They are being fined for two separate things. One is like give back the money you owe, the other is here’s some punishment for not following government rules.
I understand that, what I don't agree with is the palms that will be getting greased. Never have and never will.
 
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