The Federal Trade Commission is sending refunds totaling more than $126 million to players of the popular video game Fortnite who were charged for unwanted purchases while playing the game.
The Federal Trade Commission is sending refunds totaling more than $126 million to players of the popular video game Fortnite who were charged for unwanted purchases while playing the game.
The agency also announced it is reopening the process for Fortnite gamers and their parents or guardians to submit a claim for compensation stemming from the agency’s 2023 settlement with Fortnite developer Epic Games. The company agreed to pay $245 million to settle the FTC’s allegations that Epic used deceptive practices to trick players into making unwanted purchases.
Good. The fault is absolutely on Epic for not putting in proper confirmation dialogues for spending resources tied to real world currency.
And, as a former f2p/mobile game dev, I don’t buy the argument of “we didn’t know that would happen!”. They absolutely knew, and were trying their luck.
Thing is, they most likely made a lot more in erroneous purchases than what they have to pay in reimbursements (think people accidentally pressing a button, making an erroneous purchase, then choosing to “live with it because the amount was small anyway”)… So, in the long run the deceptive practice probably paid off for them.
Though, I hope this lawsuit dissuades them from trying it again.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about Epic’s finances, so any assumption made above is just that: a baseless assumption, backed only by the fact I’ve had many similar experiences.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
No humor/memes etc…
No affiliate links
No advertising.
No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
No self promotion.
No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
No politics.
Comments.
No personal attacks.
Obey instance rules.
No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc…)
Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Good. The fault is absolutely on Epic for not putting in proper confirmation dialogues for spending resources tied to real world currency.
And, as a former f2p/mobile game dev, I don’t buy the argument of “we didn’t know that would happen!”. They absolutely knew, and were trying their luck.
Thing is, they most likely made a lot more in erroneous purchases than what they have to pay in reimbursements (think people accidentally pressing a button, making an erroneous purchase, then choosing to “live with it because the amount was small anyway”)… So, in the long run the deceptive practice probably paid off for them.
Though, I hope this lawsuit dissuades them from trying it again.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about Epic’s finances, so any assumption made above is just that: a baseless assumption, backed only by the fact I’ve had many similar experiences.
For those like me who wonder about the story behind this: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-privacy-2bf09af93c0bca94c27e2c91ce735053