Fortnite players will now receive refunds following Epic Games’ settlement with the FTC

Fortnite players will now receive refunds following Epic Games’ settlement with the FTC

More than 600,000 Fortnite players will now receive refunds after federal regulators said Epic Games, the developer of the popular game, “tricked” people into making unwanted purchases.

The Federal Trade Commission said Monday that it is sending more than $72 million to affected players in the U.S., with additional refunds to be made at a later date. According to the agency, the average payout is around $114 per player.

The news comes two years after the FTC ordered North Carolina-based Epic Games to pay a total of $520 million to resolve allegations that the company collected personal information from children without first obtaining a parent’s consent or legal guardian.

As part of the settlement, Epic neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, but agreed at the time to revise its privacy policies, chat and text features, and reconfigure fees for game users.

A spokesman for the developer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“The FTC alleged that Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent and confusing button configuration resulted in players of all ages being charged unwanted fees based on the press of a single button,” the agency said in its press release on Monday. “For example, players could be charged while trying to wake the game from sleep mode while the game was in a loading screen, or by pressing an adjacent button while simply trying to preview an item.”

Fortnite, a battle royale game released in 2017, allows players to play as a team or alone, trying to outsmart each other until they are the last team or player standing. Epic Games does not publicly share player statistics. But Active Player, a gaming statistics website, estimates that there are currently 30 million daily active players.

The FTC said eligible consumers can still file a claim online; The deadline is January 10th.

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