Fortnite-maker Epic Games has agreed to pay a massive $520 million fine in settlements with the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly illegally gathering data from children and deploying dark patterns techniques to manipulate users into making unwanted in-game purchases. The fines mark a major regulatory win for the Biden administration’s progressive-minded FTC, who, up until now, had largely failed to deliver on its promise of more robust reinforcement of U.S. tech companies.
The first $275 million fine will settle allegations Epic collected personal information from children under the age of 13 without their parent’s consent when they played the hugely popular battle royale game. The FTC claims that unjustified data collection violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Internal Epic surveys and the licensing of Fortnite branded toys, the FTC alleges, show Epic clearly knew at least some of its player base was underage. Worse still, the agency claims Epic forced parents to wade through cumbersome barriers when they requested to have their children’s data deleted.
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The game-maker additionally agreed to pay $245 million to refund customers who the FTC says fell victim to manipulative, unfair billing practices that fall under the category, “dark patterns.” Fortnite allegedly deployed a, “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration,” that led players to incur unwanted charges with a single press of a button. In some cases, the FTC claims that single press button meant users were charged while sitting in a loading screen or while trying to wake the game from sleep mode. Users, the complaint alleges, collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars to those shady practices. Epic allegedly “ignored more than one million user complaints,” suggesting a high number of users were being wrongly charged.
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And though the FTC’s latest fine is far cry from the $5 billion penalty the agency issued against Facebook in 2019 and represents just a portion of the billions Fortnite reportedly rakes in each year, supporters said it nonetheless represents more than a mere slap on the wrist.
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Source: Epic Forced To Pay Record-Breaking $520 Million Fine
Robin Edgar
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