December 20, 2022
Epic Games, the creator of the popular Fortnite video game, will pay $520 million in fines and refunds to resolve grievances about children’s privacy after it breached the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and used design gimmicks known as dark patterns to trick millions of players into making unintentional purchases, according to U.S. federal regulators.
The FTC’s action against Epic resulted in two separate world-record settlements. Epic will pay a $275 million money – related penalty for breaking the COPPA Rule as part of a proposed federal court order filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC. Epic will pay $245 million to refund consumers for its dark patterns and billing practices under a separate proposed administrative order, the FTC’s largest refund amount in a gaming case and its largest administrative order in history.
Additionally, Epic will be obligated, in a novel stipulation, to embrace strict privacy settings for children and teens, guaranteeing that voice and text interactions are turned off by default.
Epic said it has updated its payment flows to include a yes/no option for saving payment information, as well as instant purchase cancellations and self-service refunds.
The sources for this piece include an article in Reuters.
