The refunds, stemming from a separate complaint before the FTC, concern the use of “dark patterns” that the commission said tricked Fortnite players into making unintended, in-game purchases. Additionally, parents who asked that their children’s personal information to be deleted had to “jump through unreasonable hoops,” the FTC said, “and sometimes failed to honor such requests.” The FTC alleged that Epic violated COPPA with a variety of practices, including gathering kids’ personal information without their parents’ consent, and default settings that matched children and teenagers with strangers, resulting in incidents of harassment, bullying, sexual coercion, and other harm. Epic Games founder and chairman Tim Sweeney signed the settlement on Dec. The Justice Department filed both a complaint and the settlement of that complaint in federal court in North Carolina on Monday.
#EPIC GAMES SETTLEMENT EMAIL REAL TRIAL#
The settlement results from an FTC investigation into Epic’s privacy protection and other practices, which came to light during the trial of its lawsuit against Apple back in 2021.
The $275 million Epic will pay for violating COPPA is the largest penalty the FTC has collected for violating a rule it enforces. “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.”
Khan said in a statement released Monday. “Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fortnite users, including teenagers and children,” FTC chairwoman Lina M. The settlement concerns violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), and the refunds, of $245 million, are the largest the FTC has ever secured in a video gaming case. Fortnite maker Epic Games will pay a combined $520 million, in both fines and refunds, under an agreement reached with the Federal Trade Commission announced Monday.
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