Epic Games To Pay $520M To Settle Two Fortnite Civil Lawsuits
Video game developer Epic Games has agreed with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to pay $520 million to settle two investigations by the regulator.
A record $275 million civil fine will be paid for alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) according to allegations that Epic collected personal information from players under the age of 13 without parental notification or consent, according to the Wall Street Journal .
In addition, the lawsuit alleges that Epic unlawfully enabled real-time voice and text chat between children under 13 and other game participants by default. In associating them with strangers, the FTC states that some of them have “been intimidated, threatened, harassed, and subjected to dangerous and psychologically traumatic issues such as suicide.”
Secondly, Epic Games will pay another $245 million for the use of tricks or non-intuitive interface elements (so-called dark patterns) that encourage players to make unintentional purchases. Epic Games blocked the accounts of users who attempted to dispute payments made in this way, and also hid purchase cancellation features so that they were difficult to find. According to the regulator, in total, the company received more than a million complaints about such actions.
