![]() That was a lot of information, and there's a fair amount of context that needs to go around it before we get to Epic's response. The proposed agreement will be published in the Federal Register soon, open for public comment for 30 days, after which the commission will decide whether to make the order final. Epic will also have to seek affirmative consent before charging users. The settlement accepted by the FTC will see Epic barred from blocking customers who dispute unauthorised charges, and prohibited from using dark patterns. The company "ignored" over a million user complaints and internal warnings and, says the FTC, went on to "purposefully obscure cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find." ![]() Even when Epic agreed to unlock an account, apparently, users would be warned that they risked a permanent ban on the account if they disputed future charges. The FTC alleged Epic locked the accounts of customers who disputed such charges directly through their credit card companies, in turn locking them out of previously purchased content. Similar claims have been brought against other big tech companies in different contexts, most notably Apple and the App Store. Part of this is also that until 2018 buying V-Bucks, Fortnite's in-game currency, had fewer checks on it, so once an account was linked up to a payment method kids could buy V-Bucks without their parents realising. The FTC says it did thanks to a "counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration" whereby players could incur charges through the press of a single button, for example, to wake the game from sleep mode, or within a loading screen, or when trying to preview an item. The dark patterns side is all about whether Fortnite tricked players into making purchases. And while it eventually added a button allowing users to turn voice chat off, Epic made it difficult for users to find". As early as 2017 Epic employees were expressing concern internally about the makeup of the audience and default settings, per the FTC filing: "The company resisted turning off the default settings. Interestingly enough one of the key pieces of evidence for this was Epic's own concerns. The FTC also says the default settings, alongside the game's nature of matching players with strangers, led to children and teens being "bullied, threatened, harassed, and exposed to dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while on Fortnite". Which is exactly the kind of thing that really sets off a regulator's alarm bells. ![]() It also says that Epic "required parents who requested that their children’s personal information be deleted jump through unreasonable hoops, and sometimes failed to honor such requests". The failure to notify parents and obtain consent seems to be the real biggie here, with the FTC saying Epic knew a huge part of Fortnite's audience was children and didn't take this seriously enough (I am obviously paraphrasing).
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