WASHINGTON—Epic Games, the creators of the wildly popular Fortnite game, has agreed to pay about $520 million for allegations that it violated children’s privacy laws and used misleading gaming features that tricked customers into selling out millions of dollars.
The federal trade commission alleged the company violated the law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental consent and enabling voice and text chat by default (an unfair practice that puts kids and teens in risky contact with strangers).
Additionally, in the form of a separate thread comes a $245 million proposed settlement with epic games for using digital dark patterns to bill Fortnite players for unintentional in-game purchases. In all, the company received over a million complaints about unwanted charges.
The settlement over privacy violations requires Epic to adopt aggressive default privacy settings for children and teens, guaranteeing that voice and text communications are turned off by default.
The agreement over misleading gaming practices also mandates that Epic refund consumers $245 million, the largest refund amount in gaming history.
If you are a Fortnite customer with a refund question, you need to Bookmark the FTC’s Fortnite page and sign up for email updates. You will be contacted when more information is available.
Crawford County Now will continue to cover this developing news story.