The Federal Trade Commission is sending refunds totaling more than $72 million to consumers who were tricked by Epic Games, maker of the popular video game Fortnite, into making unwanted purchases.
As part of a settlement first announced in December 2022, the FTC obtained an order requiring Epic Games to pay $245 million to resolve allegations that the game maker used design tactics known as dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases, let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement, and blocked some users who disputed unauthorized charges from accessing their purchased content. The FTC alleged that Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players of all ages to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button. For example, players could be charged while attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while attempting simply to preview an item.
Cool that they are getting into the weeds looking at UI design.
My son and I are very casual players and it always seemed scammy how much they push spending vbucks to boost though the season pass. To my mind that should be an uncommon occurrence and presented as a secondary option, but of course Epic presents it as perfectly normal selecting the button as default on some screens.
