Epic Games has settled Federal Trade Commission charges that the “Fortnite” creator illegally collected information from children and tricked millions into making unintended purchases for a total of $520 million, the federal government announced Monday.
The settlement covers two separate cases: Epic will pay $275 million for collecting personal information of children under 13 without parental consent, a violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act; and $245 million to refund consumers of all ages who were tricked into unintended purchases.
Both cases represent record amounts. The previous record for child privacy violations was $170, which Google paid in 2019 over allegations of data harvesting from kids using YouTube.
The FTC said Fortnite’s user interface and layout was confusing and inconsistent, and led to users accidentally buying in-game extras with a single click.
More to come …