Epic Games To Pay $540 Million Over Allegations Of Privacy Violations And Unwanted Charges

I... wow. I'm stunned to see a major games publisher face any kind of penalty, quite frankly.
I hope this sets precedent, and makes major companies think twice before implementing dodgy monetization practices!

Goodness, that is a hefty fine. Considering they're a multibillion-dollar company, this shouldn't hurt them too much. But hopefully, this leads to other companies changing the way their transaction models are laid out.

I was never a fan of micro transactions in video games. Well deserved honestly.

I love America. you get caught then. pay a fine with house money and noone involved faces repercussions anything. They pay their fine and just change to some other greedy way to rape our children.

But...you can refund your purchases on Fortnite?

Unless it means where it leads you to purchase an item straight with a CC like the subscriber bundle, I don't know how those work with refunds, but I mean that's pretty clearly marked with how much it costs in dollars and goes to the whole CC screen, which is just a case of bad parenting/teaching.

So I'm a bit confused.

That's just a drop in the ocean for how much they make with this game. It has now got me wondering what is the most an individual has spent so far on this game in total?

Was Fortnite selling Smurf berries? 😂

@CharlieGirl Well Apple did pay $100mil, see below.

For the young’uns. Can’t believe it was a decade ago already.🤷🏻‍♂️

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2349003/Apple-loses-100MILLION-class-action-suit-parents-kids-went-unauthorized-app-spending-sprees.html

https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/15/apple-settles-with-ftc-over-app-store-in-app-purchases-to-avoid-distracting-legal-fight/

At the end of the day people ultimately make their own decisions whether they purchase something like this or not. Not trying to defend this company and it’s greedy tactics but at the same time I do not see what they are doing wrong.

So much for Epic taking up for the little guys against the big, bad Apple.

Well that’s a lot of money. Would be nice to see that money used for something worthwhile but this is America.

In this instance, blame the game. Had an issue similar to what is being revealed here, wife paid for something in a game she was playing and we ended up with 20$/mo recurring charge without realizing. This is the scummiest of scummy practices. There is some old saying about the "fine print".

A drop in the bucket for all the money they made, but hey...

@Hero-of-WiiU
I agree that we all make our own decisions to buy or not, but not if we are referring to children.

All free-to-play games should be investigated under similar scrutiny.

I don't play Fortnite. Does anyone have a specific example of what was going on? Just curious.

What the heck is an unintentional purchase? Like what?

Why am I not surprised. 😒

Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for this business model. Call me a gaming snob, but as the 80s and 90s generations start to have children reaching "prime gaming age" I'm confident we'll show the likes of Fortnite a prolonged middle finger and safely steer our children towards the, literally, tens of thousands of gaming masterpiece alternatives that are already out there, with many more to come.

If my kids want to play Fortnite, they can play for 20 minutes. If they want to play Zelda, they can take an hour. Let's see how long Fortnite remains the popular choice.

I feel like it’s up to the player, I used to spend a lot of money on this game, and what did I do? I pulled myself away, I came back and I have fixed my spending habits, only buying the stuff I want, not just what seems cool. But ai understand that isn’t easy for everybody. This is not to say they don’t have practices in place to make you want to spend that money as much as possible, but for me, I still feel like it’s up to the player.

good. Kids should not be manipulated into micro-transactions

@Hero-of-WiiU

As someone pointed out, it's because targetting children aka minors aka not fully responsible and different laws protecting children.

As it said

• violating children’s privacy law*

You really cannot expect some 8 yr old have capability of an adult?

Fortnite shouldn't be exist.

I'm still baffled parents tie credit cards to any device they let their child use. I can't even fathom doing that.

@nessisonett

Whereas in the UK they'd be throwing the money off parliament's roof top to the great unwashed.

Gimme a break.

@Anti-Matter Why? Why shouldn’t it exist, it makes people happy. I agree that there practices aren’t great but shouldn’t exist?

@k8sMum Hahaha you’re assuming that I don’t think that the UK is also a sinking ship.

Gimme a break.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm so depressed about the direction the world is trending now that it's making me grumpy (insert stronger word here).

I bet they refund the money in V Bucks and it's just starts the cycle again

@acefondu

The Switch doesn't allow saving a card for minor accounts.

Nelson from the Simpsons laugh

Well, gee. I hope this doesn't impact free game offers.

I'd like to be kidding but I truly only use the EGS for free games. Got Sonic Mania and Celeste from them.

It's very encouraging news to see a big multinational corporation finally held accountable on something.

More of this, please!

Rookie mistake.They could have spent a tiny fraction of that money buying a US senator and all this would have gone away.

@Finntendo @dew12333
Well just how are they able to purchase the dlc and whatnot? I get that they are able to save card information on whatever platform that they are on but again that is their own fault and ultimately the parents fault for letting that happen.

I should add that this is a good thing to protect consumers mainly minors but seems there is not much responsibility on the consumers themselves.

A company owned by Communist China screwed people? Say it aint so.

Morden capatlism at it's finest.

You can follow the law and make a game that makes $500M, OR you can break the law, screw over children, destroy families, ruin lives and make $2 billion ... BUT they are going to fine you, so you only end up making a billion more instead of the full 1.5 billion more.

I bet they are crying themselves to sleep.

@CharlieGirl Happens all the time, but it barely gets reported by news outlets. The precedence has been set for decades.

Compared to what they made off Fortnite? Probably a small penance.

@willi3su

Just wow.

1) I don't think you know what communist means. China is a mixed ownership economy, so companies like Tencent are privately owned and operate on the international, capitalist market.

2) An actual "communist" company can't really screw over the people because the people own it. On the other hand capitalism, by design, says that if you literally killing people but it's profitable that is GOOD and you are obligated to keep doing it to earn money for your share holders. If you stop killing people and make less money you are bad at capitalism.

3) A good example of this would be ... I don't know ... Epic games, the US owned company with headquarters in North Carolina, who's CEO Tim Sweeney (an American) has a controlling interest with over 50% of all shares. This means that he is 100% in control of all day to day operations and decision makings, even if Tencent owns 40%.

It's just the cost of business

@Drac_Mazoku agree but some parents are nfi. all my purchesses need a code sent to my phone via text.

@Pokemaniacal

It's always so fun for me to look at how little people who like to use the words "communist" or "socialist" as insults understand what any of the words mean.

Market capitalism says there is no morality outside of profit. You are morally obligated to make money, nothing else. That's just what that economic system means ... if that makes you uncomfortable, maybe don't blindly support it.

Look at Philip Morris, they sell a product that kills the people who use it and the people around them. They are not in any way obligated, nor have they ever been interested in, making that product safer. They have spent BILLIONS fighting for the right to continue to indiscriminately kill for profit. As long as they make money, it is morally good. Pfizer choses to sell life saving drugs at over 10,000 times cost, because in capitalist ideology, saving 1000 lives while making a million in profit is worse and less desirable then letting 990 people die but saying 10 while making 10 million in profit. That's how it's supposed to work. You are supposed to think like that, you are supposed to do that.

I'm not telling you what to think or what to support, but if you're going to be pro-capitalism, you should OWN the thing you are supporting. You should post things like "It is very good for the share holders that Epic found a way to maximum profits, as a capitalist I fully support what they are doing and think the courts should have no right to stop them or fine them as ANY law that regulates industry is a function of socialism". Don't be upset that they did that at the expense of others.

If you want an economic system where a company is held accountable for screwing over people, there are laws preventing this type of behaviour, and social obligation come before profit, you might want to look into support things like market socialism or hard focused-demand-side market capitalism, which are common in Nordic countries and Japan.

@Pokemaniacal

Haha, my friend, you are the gift that keeps on giving! The term little people isn't in my post, it's product of your poor reading comprehension confusing the clauses and verb agreement in that sentence.

Stating how you refuse to process new information because you don't want to learn how you might be wrong about things isn't something to be proud of, and really says a lot about why your perception is so inaccurate.

@themightyant to the SEC, just like companies that pay bribery fines for violating the FCPA (Foreign Corruption Practices Act). This link shows how they put the proceeds of those fines in one of three places: https://www.marketplace.org/2022/08/12/where-does-money-collected-from-corporate-fines-go/#:~:text=Over%20at%20the%20SEC%2C%20a,used%20to%20repay%20harmed%20investors.

@HeadPirate Sorry you have to deal with this idiocy... I try to not read the comments sections at all, or avoid responding to people who are obviously ether children or too narrow minded to even bother to have a legit adult conversation.

Nothing the money they got from Tencent can't fix!

@theneslink

Thanks for saying this. To me, I'm never actually replying to the OP. I just figure there are likely people reading who have the same kind of misconceptions, but from a more honest place, who are interested in learning something new. My reply is always for them.

@theModestMouse

me too, I am not a huge fan but i do play it few times a month, I don't see anything misleading about it. This is so weird.

@nessisonett

The whole western world is the titanic at this point. We’ve hit the iceberg; no going back.

I’ll be one of those guys playing the violins. Except I’ll be posting dank memes instead.

Unless I'm being goofy, isn't the only way to see any form of shoving purchases in your face, if you literally go to the item shop, which is where you spend the money in? Like I honestly cannot recall ever just booting up the game or sitting in the menu and having paid stuff shoved in my face.

The content of the article and statement from the FTC do not explicitly state what these "dark patterns" are, or how Epic offended against the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. It also didn't explicitly state that the violation was in Fortnite. It could be some other game like candy crush or something? I think a lot of free to play games violate privacy and endanger children by having strangers voices appear in your living room as a default option. Who knows what the actual problem was?

@nocdaes so many good games out there why fortnite? There's lot of good games for kids to play like zelda as you said or minecraft and even stardew valley imo

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika so true

Ha ha, they can suck it

@Hero-of-WiiU

I do agree that if card info is saved, parents can only blame themselves. None of the services force you to save the card info. And parents should be responsible for their kids' messes (which I have always told when I have seen some parent complaning about purchases happening without their knowledge) but then again they are card holders and purchases are made without consent. I do not know how parental locks work with different services, can you ban purchases (ofc best would be not save card info, but then you can be like my cousin and steal their mom's card to buy stuff in game)
And parents should always supervise what kids do and play, even if it's "child's game". With rights come responsibility and minors don't have full rights so they cannot have full responsibilities.

I don't have card info saved even I am close being middle age and no kids.

It's a tricky matter. Card should only be used by owner so use is unauthorized, minors cannot agree to contracts and so on and so on.

My comment saying Epic Games Launcher is Spyware with proof got removed. In any case delete that stuff off of your pc

@TechaNinja I suppose the fact that you see other players with items you don’t have or advertising outside the game for those items that would make it more compelling for a child.

I do wanna know what dark patterns are though.

@DreamlandGem oh snap didn't realise! Fair play then

@Moistnado not Candy Crush since that is owned by Activision

Privacy case is an eyebrow raiser for sure (although I thought one was supposed to pay the verdict sums for a proven guilt, so the word "allegations" sounds confusing in this context), but the "tricks" better be something more substantial than the same old lament for people who warrant help and/or supervision but would most likely get neither for the money charged. Have the brave FTC crusaders already tried and fined every mobile add with the infamous "fake close buttons" prior to that? Grind or banner FOMO aren't overly impressive evidence in comparison.

@Hero-of-WiiU Well, it's not your own decision if you get tricked into buying something you never intended to purchase like in this case.

@TechaNinja Even so, you can still be tricked into making extra purchases beyond the purchase that you did intend to make in the Item Shop.

@HeadPirate Sure, that's the definition of pure capitalism, but most capitalist countries don't go that far anymore. Most modern first world countries like the U.S. and the U.K. run on a mostly capitalist economy but with proper regulations and safeguards as well as a decent but not completely excessive amount of socialist programs. They're still best described as capitalist economies but without many of the downsides that you pointed out.

Meanwhile, you're confusing "socialist" with "Communist." Communist countries attempt to run a mostly socialist economy through ownership by the State, not the people, and such an economy always fails badly. China does as well as it does only because they loosened up into a hybrid economy. Most Communist countries also wind up run by tyrannical dictators, as well.