Epic will also agree not to enact blanket bans for accounts that perform chargebacks, only disabling those it suspects of actual fraud. The FTC said Epic ignored more than a million user complaints and employee concerns over wrongful charges.Īlong with the $245 million Epic will pay to cover refunds, the proposed consent order seeks to block it from using dark patterns to charge users or otherwise charge them without obtaining explicit consent. ![]() On top of that, Epic allegedly locked the accounts of users who disputed unauthorized payments with their credit card companies. ![]() The FTC has targeted the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple for similar reasons in the past. "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 agency noted. The FTC said children were able to buy V-Bucks, Fortnite's in-game currency, without parental consent until 2018. The agency said these design decisions led consumers to pay "hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges." The second complaint accused Epic of using "dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases and children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement." The FTC claimed that players could be charged when resuming Fortnite from sleep mode, when it was on a loading screen or by accidentally clicking a button next to an item preview option. Without parental consent, users with cabined accounts are locked out of features like using voice chat or buying items from in-game stores with real money. It said at the time these accounts provided a safe way for kids to play its games. The company also needs to delete personal data it has collected on Fortnite players unless a player says they're 13 or over or it gets parental consent to retain the information.Įarlier this month, Epic rolled out "cabined accounts" for young Fortnite, Fall Guys and Rocket League players. "Children and teens have been bullied, threatened, harassed and exposed to dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while on Fortnite," the FTC claimed.Īs part of the COPPA settlement, the FTC says there's a first-of-its-kind provision that forces Epic to have more stringent default privacy settings for kids and teens, including making sure that voice and text chat are off by default. The agency also accused Epic of engaging in "unfair practices" and harming children and teens by enabling voice and text chat by default. In its complaint, the FTC said parents who wanted Epic to delete personal information on their kids had to "jump through extraordinary hoops" and even then the company sometimes didn't honor those requests. ![]() ![]() The FTC claimed that Epic violated the COPPA rule by collecting personal data from Fortnite players aged under 13 without notifying or seeking consent from their parents. The game generated $9 billion in profit between 20, and $5.1 billion in gross revenue in 2020. Fortnite has been a colossal success for Epic.
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