Epic Games to pay $520 million to FTA in record-breaking settlements

Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, are set to pay a record $520 million in total to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating children’s privacy law and tricking users into making purchases on their popular battle royale game. 

There are two separate violations by Epic Games. The first is the violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and changing default privacy settings in Fortnite. Epic Games will be paying a $275 million penalty for this charge. Secondly, Epic Games will pay $245 million to the FTC which will be used to refund customers who were tricked into making payments on Fortnite. 

Fortnite allegedly exposed children and teens to bullying and harassment 

Both of these are record-breaking settlements in FTC’s history. FTC made a federal complaint against the Fortnite-maker as they violated COPPA by collecting personal information in Fortnite of kids under the age of 13. Fortnite collected this information without informing parents or taking their consent. 

Fortnite has also been accused of enabling real-time voice and text communications for children and teens by default. This violates the FTC Act as it led to some children being bullied and harassed online. Epic Games will now add a privacy setting before children and teens can enable voice and text communication in the game. This privacy setting would require these gamers to give affirmative consent before these modes of communication are enabled. 

Fortnite tricked players into unwanted payments

Apart from this, FTC’s second complaint alleged that Fortnite used “dark patterns and billing practices” to trick players into making purchases. These dark patterns arose from the fact that payments could be made with “the press of a single button”, as per FTC.

There was also no parental consent required or confirmation for the payment method involved, leading to many children buying in-game items on Fortnite without their parents having any idea beforehand. 

FTC elaborated, “Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button.” They added, “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.”