The FTC has announced today that Epic Games has agreed to pay more than half billion dollars to settle its charges. According to the FTC, Epic will pay $275 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (C.O.P.P.A.) and $245 million for design relying on dark patterns “to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases” for Fortnite.
The FTC says violating (C.O.P.P.A.) included collecting personal information from children under 13 without parental consent or notification, as well as enabling voice and text chat for children and teens by default. The dark patterns the FTC points to the “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration” as well as the single-button purchases which meant users could buy something accidentally when waking the game up from sleep mode or while on a loading screen. The FTC also notes the preview button being adjacent to the purchase button, which can also result in accidental purchases.
Fortnite allowed children to purchase V-bucks, the game’s virtual currency without parental consent or card holder action until 2018. They also locked the accounts of users who disputed unauthorized charges through their credit card companies.
The FTC also determined that Epic ignored more than a million user complaints about wrongful charges and used internal testing to make the cancel and refund features more difficult to find. The FTC will handle the refunds and the refund program will be set up on its own website. The $245 million for the dark patterns complaints will be used to refund customers.
Epic confirmed the settlement and said it would be “moving beyond long-standing industry practices.”
“No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here,” the company said. “The video game industry is a place of fast-moving innovation, where player expectations are high and new ideas are paramount. 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.
“Over the past few years, we’ve been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry.”