A total of $72 million in refunds are on their way to consumers who were ‘tricked’ into making unwanted purchases in Epic Games’ Fortnite.
In an official statement on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website, it was confirmed that a first wave of refunds totaling up to more than $72 million are now being sent to consumers who were ‘tricked’ by Epic Games into making unwanted purchases in the popular game Fortnite.
The refunds come as part of a settlement first announced in December 2022, where the FTC obtained an order requiring Epic Games to pay $245 million over allegations of privacy violations and unwanted charges. The actions that the FTC took against Epic Games were said to result in ‘record-breaking’ settlements; besides paying almost half-a-billion dollars, Epic Games is also required to adopt stronger default privacy settings for children and teens. The settlement is the FTC’s largest refund amount in a gaming case, and its largest administrative order in history.
The allegations claimed that Epic Games used predatory design tactics known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick players into making unwanted purchases, allowed children to make unauthorised payments without any parental involvement, and blocked a number of users who had disputed these unauthorised charges from accessing their purchased content.
In addition to these allegations, The FTC also alleged that Fortnite’s “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration” had led players to make unwanted purchases “based on the press of a single button.” The FTC further elaborated on this by listing examples of in-game scenarios that led to unwanted purchases, like waking the game from sleep mode, being on a loading screen, or pressing an adjacent button while previewing an item.
The first round of refunds is now being sent out to affected players, totaling up to 629,344 total payments. The average payment to those involved in the claim is $114. Eligible consumers are invited to submit a claim online by accessing the claim form at the FTC’s official website.