Fortnite creator Epic Games will pay $520 million (around Rs. 4,305 billion) to settle allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children and tricked people into making purchases, the Federal Trade Commission and the company on Monday.
It will pay a record US$275 million (around Rs.2,300 billion) fine for violating a children’s privacy law and adopt strong default privacy settings for young people. Epic Games will also pay US$245 million (around Rs.2,000 billion) to reimburse consumers who were tricked into making purchases they did not intend by so-called “dark patterns”, the FTC said.
“Epic used privacy-invading defaults and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fourteen days users, including teenagers and children,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan said in a statement.
The announcement comes as the agency has taken on a stronger role in overseeing the gaming industry and announced a complaint against it last week Microsoft over its $69 billion (approximately 6 lakh crore) takeover bid. activity.
Epic said in a statement Monday that it eliminated pay-to-win and pay-to-progress mechanics when two players competed against each other, and in 2019 it eliminated random item loot boxes with an explicit yes/no choice meet to save payment information.
It said players could request refunds via credit cards. “If a cardholder sees an unauthorized transaction on their bank statement, they can report it to their bank to have it reversed,” the company said in its statement.
To protect children, Epic said it created features like more accessible parental controls and a PIN requirement so parents can authorize purchases, and a daily spending limit for children under 13.
That FTC said Epic employees had raised concerns about the company’s default settings for children, saying people should be encouraged to sign up for voice chat. The FTC said voice and text chat must be disabled by default.
Children’s privacy advocates were pleased with the settlement, with Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy saying that “children’s privacy rights should also be better respected through this enforcement of the Federal Children’s Privacy Act (COPPA)”.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
