Maybe it’s karma…?
The FTC has slapped Epic Games with a whopping $520 million fine. The FTC claims that Epic utilized “design tricks, known as dark patterns, to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases”.
That high fine is derived from two violations; the first is that they were in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA] rule. COPPA, for those not in the know, is meant to protect children under the age of 13 from privacy invasions by sites and services online. This accounts for $275 million of the fine.
The other $240 million is related to their use of “dark patterns” in game. Dark patterns are interfaces that are designed to trick users into making transactions, big or small, and often recurring. As the FTC’s own documentation explains it:
For decades, unscrupulous direct mail marketers and brick-and-mortar retailers have
relied on design tricks and psychological tactics, such as pre-checked boxes, hard-to-find-and-
read disclosures, and confusing cancellation policies, to get consumers to part with their money
or data.
The FTC states that Fortnite utilizes a “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration,” to manipulate users into paying for things, including being charged while waking up from sleep mode. And as they go on, account holders can be charged without authorization, and many children happen to play Fortnite… well, that’s a recipe for financial disaster. And, according to the FTC, Epic “purposefully obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find,” and ignored millions of user complaints regarding exactly these systems.
As our complaints note, Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fortnite users, including teenagers and children. Protecting the public, and especially children, from online privacy invasions and dark patterns is a top priority for the Commission, and these enforcement actions make clear to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these unlawful practices.
FTC Chair Lina M. Khan
Ah, but that’s not where it ends; Fortnite‘s voice chat entered their crosshairs. Per the FTC, Epic employees “urged” the company to make voice chat an “opt-in” function, whereas the settings are on by default. The company, however, resisted this change, even as children were “harassed, including sexually, while playing the game.”
Now, Fortnite will have the feature disabled by default for users under 13 years of age, unless parents consent to the feature through privacy settings. This, coincidentally, is where that COPPA fine comes in, because they were also storing data derived from users, and Epic must now establish a “comprehensive privacy program.”
For all of this, Epic posted a rather lengthy response, mostly trying to spin the reality on most fof these points to not look so bad.
No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here. The video game industry is a place of fast-moving innovation, where player expectations are high and new ideas are paramount. Statutes written decades ago don’t specify how gaming ecosystems should operate. The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough. We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players.
Over the past few years, we’ve been making changes to ensure our ecosystem meets the expectations of our players and regulators, which we hope will be a helpful guide for others in our industry.
It’s probably not much of a surprise the FTC got involved. They’ve been taking more of an interest in the gaming space over the past few years, due in no small part to the loot box/gambling controversy.
Source: IGN
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