NewsEpic Games agrees to pay record-breaking $520 million for privacy violations

IMAGE: ERIK MCLEAN/UNSPLASH

Epic Games, the developer of the popular video game Fortnite, agreed to pay $520 million over allegations the company violated digital privacy protections for children and used so-called “dark patterns” to trick users into making unintentional purchases, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Monday.

“As early as 2017, Epic employees urged the company to change the default settings to require users to opt in for voice chat, citing concern about the impact on children in particular,” the FTC said in its announcement. “Despite this and reports that children had been harassed, including sexually, while playing the game, the company resisted turning off the default settings.”

“Epic ignored more than one million user complaints and repeated employee concerns that ‘huge’ numbers of users were being wrongfully charged,” the FTC said. “In fact, Epic’s changes only made the problem worse… Using internal testing, Epic purposefully obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find.”

https://therecord.media/epic-games-agrees-to-pay-record-breaking-520-million-for-privacy-violations/