The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fined Epic Games more than $520 million for Fortnite.

According to the FTC, two settlements were reached and together, they add up to a fine of over half a billion dollars, as Epic violated the US COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) by collecting data on players under the age of thirteen without parental consent and in some cases made it much more complicated (bureaucratic…) to delete children’s data.

For it, Epic must pay $275 million. The fine for violating COPPA is more significant than the $170 million Google had to pay in 2019 when the tech company was accused of harvesting data from children who were YouTube users. The company, led by Tim Sweeney, has to implement strong privacy default settings for young and teen users, such as turning off text and voice communications. Epic remedied it in September for users under 18. By default, chat is set to “Nobody,” profiles are hidden, teams are invite-only, and personalized offers are turned off by default. In text chat, swearing is also censored.

The other part of the fine, $245 million, relates to what the FTC says are irregularities in Fortnite’s store and its refund systems. Epic used several tactics to force us to unwittingly buy virtual currency for costumes and dance moves, taking millions of dollars from consumers in unauthorized ways. Affected people can apply for a refund here if they are parents whose children made an unauthorized credit card purchase in the Epic Games Store between January 2017 and November 2018; Fortnite players who were charged in-game currency (V-Bucks) for unwanted in-game items (such as cosmetics, llamas, or battle passes) between January 2017 and September 2022; or Fortnite players whose accounts were locked between January 2017 and September 2022 after disputing unauthorized charges with their credit card companies.

That’s a lot of money, even for Epic Games.

Source: WCCFTech