The US Federal Trade Commission and Epic Games announced that the company that produces the game “Fortnite” will pay $520 million to settle allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children and deceived users into making purchases.
The company, a local Arabic daily quoting Reuters, said will pay a record $275 million fine for violating a children’s privacy law and adopt strict default settings to protect the privacy of young people.
The Federal Trade Commission said the company will also pay $245 million to reimburse consumers who were deceived by so-called “dark patterns” into making purchases they did not intend to make.
“Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive user interfaces that misled Fortnite users, including teens and children,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.
The announcement comes as the federal agency begins to play a greater role in censoring the gaming industry, last week announcing a complaint against Microsoft over its $69 billion bid to acquire video game company Activision.
Epic Games said in a statement that it had eliminated pay-to-win and pay-to-progress mechanics in player-to-play competition and loot boxes containing random items in 2019.
It added that it would make a clear choice to accept or refuse to save payment information, and that players could claim refunds via credit cards.
And she continued, “If the cardholder notices an unauthorized transaction in his account statement, he can inform his bank of it to cancel it.”
The company indicated that in order to protect children, it created features such as easy-to-use parental controls, the requirement to enter a secret code, allowing parents to approve purchases, and setting a maximum daily spending limit for children under 13 years old. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Epic Games employees have expressed concern about the company’s default settings for children, saying people should have the freedom to choose to join the voice chat.
The FTC said that chats, whether voice or text, should be turned off by default. The settlement warmed the heart of children’s privacy advocates.
“Children’s privacy rights are expected to be more respected through this enforcement of the federal Children’s Data Privacy Act,” said Geoff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy.