The FTC says Epic broke children’s privacy laws and manipulated users into making unauthorized purchases.
While your kids were playing Fortnite, Fortnite was playing with consumer protection laws.
Epic Games, the maker of the very popular Fortnite series, is paying two of the largest settlements in Federal Trade Commission (FTC) history over children’s privacy violations and “dark patterns” that intentionally tricked users into making purchases through manipulative design.
The settlements, announced on Monday, require Epic to pay a total of $520 million for the two consumer protection issues: $275 million for the privacy violations and $245 million for making it easy for consumers to purchase items accidentally and very difficult for them to cancel or refund those purchases. That money will be refunded to consumers; it’s the largest refund amount in a gaming case as well as the largest administrative order in FTC history. The $275 million penalty is the largest ever for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA (the previous FTC record of $136 million was held by Google over YouTube videos aimed at children).
“Protecting the public, and especially children, from online privacy invasions and dark patterns is a top priority for the Commission, and these enforcement actions make clear to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these unlawful practices,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a statement.
While the FTC is better known these days for its aggressive attitude toward antitrust regulations under chair Khan, it also enforces consumer protection laws. These settlements show it’s not letting that mandate lapse, nor is it afraid to go after industry leaders.
The FTC has been looking into dark patterns since before Khan got there, with then-acting chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter holding a dark patterns workshop in April 2021.
