The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced plans to send refunds of over $72 million to Epic Games’ customers that were tricked into making unwanted purchases.
In a press release on 9 December, the agency announced that this is the first round of payments and more funds will be distributed at a later date.
As of 9 December, 629,344 total payments were distributed, about half of which are PayPal payments and the other half are checks.
What happened
The FTC had alleged that Epic Games — the maker of popular video game Fortnite — used tricks to cause its users to incur several bills they had no plans of paying for. Many of the bills were incurred by children without any parental involvement.
Additionally, Epic Games allegedly blocked some users who disputed unauthorized charges from accessing their purchased content. The agency also blamed Fortnite’s confusing layout for some of the unwanted charges, saying:
“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.”
For this, the FTC obtained an order requiring Epic Games to pay $245 million to resolve the allegations as part of a settlement first announced in December 2022.
To claim their payments, consumers have to select their payment methods when completing their claim form, and redeem their PayPal payment within 30 days or cash their checks within 90 days, with an average payment of about $114.
Epic Games’ other fines
Apart from the FTC in the U.S., Epic Games has also been fined in the Netherlands for the same offence.
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) asked the company to pay roughly $1.2 million for tricking users, mostly children, into making in-game purchases that they did not want.
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