Epic Games introduced these changes in September 2022. A screen showing the new settings menu for chat, voice, and other interactions. “We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players,” the company said. The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough. “Statutes written decades ago don’t specify how gaming ecosystems should operate. “No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here,” Epic Games said in Monday’s statement. Until that consent is received, cabined players will not have access to chat or purchasing features (but they do have access to all previously acquired in-game content). 7.Ī cabined account is one set up by a user who indicates they’re under age 13 (or their country’s age of digital consent) they’re then asked for a parent’s email address, so that they may make affirmative consent for them to play Fortnite (or Rocket League or Fall Guys). The most recent is a feature called “Cabined Accounts,” announced Dec. “These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers.”Įpic Games, for its part, issued a statement outlining the changes it has made to Fortnite, many of them in the past year, in response to consumer complaints and privacy concerns. “ Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button,” the FTC alleged. 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. 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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