- Epic Games to pay $520 million for breaking children’s privacy laws by forcing voice chat to be turned on and collecting personal data from underage users with no parental consent.
- After receiving warnings and complaints, Epic Games added an option to turn voice chat off but allegedly made it so that it was difficult to find.
- Necessary changes that comply with FTC’s rules implemented by the developer after the backlash which makes the game child-friendly in terms of purchasing goods.
Epic Games‘ Fortnite is a free-to-play game but it charges its players for cosmetics, emotes, and more. According to The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Fortnite currently has 400 million users worldwide with billions of revenue every year.
Fortnite breaks COPPA despite being warned
As Fortnite is a game particularly popular amongst children and young adults, Epic Games was expected to be extra diligent in its practices. The FTC claimed in its complaint that Fortnite broke the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting personal data from users under the age of 13 without their knowledge or verifiable parental consent. FTC says,
« As early as 2017, Epic employees urged the company to change the default settings to require users to opt in for voice chat, citing concern about the impact on children in particular.
Despite this and reports that children had been harassed, including sexually, while playing the game, the company resisted turning off the default settings. And while it eventually added a button allowing users to turn voice chat off, Epic made it difficult for users to find, according to the complaint. »
Specifically, the FTC alleged that Epic Games:
- Violated COPPA by failing to notify parents and obtain consent: The FTC alleged that Epic was aware that many children were playing Fortnite, as shown through surveys of Fortnite users, the licensing and marketing of Fortnite toys and merchandise, player support and other company communications, and collected personal data from children without first obtaining parents’ verifiable consent. The company also required parents who requested that their children’s personal information be deleted to jump through unreasonable hoops and sometimes failed to honor such requests.
- Default settings harm children and teens: Epic’s settings enable live on-by-default text and voice communications for users. The FTC alleges that these default settings, along with Epic’s role in matching children and teens with strangers to play Fortnite together, harmed children and teens. Children and teens have been bullied, threatened, harassed, and exposed to dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while on Fortnite.
Epic will be obliged to make text and voice chats in Fortnite an opt-in feature for kids and teens that can only be enabled with the parents’ explicit approval through a privacy setting, in addition to the $275 million record civil penalty levied by a proposed federal court order.
Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said,
« Under the proposed orders announced today, the company will be required to change its default settings, return millions to consumers, and pay a record-breaking penalty for its privacy abuses. »
Epic Games finally implements changes
After the punishments and the media shedding more light on the situation, Epic Games made changes to comply with FTC’s rules. The company said,
« In September, we implemented high privacy default settings for players under the age of 18. Chat defaults to “Nobody,” profile details default to hidden, parties default to “Invite Only,” and personalized recommendations are defaulted “Off”. Players under 16 also have the mature language filter defaulted “On” for text chat. »
Here are some of the changes the developer implemented:
- No pay-to-win or pay-to-progress mechanics in player-versus-player experiences.
- A Return Tickets system that enables self-service refunds on eligible digital goods without the need to specify a reason.
- Instant cancellations of cosmetic purchases made with V-bucks, with a recently extended cancellation window.
- A hold-to-purchase mechanic for all in-game purchases in Fortnite.
- An updated chargeback policy.
- An explicit yes/no choice to save payment information.