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· Posted on
February 21, 2024

Fortnite creator, Epic Games, has settled a $520 million USD lawsuit for duping-kids-into-buying-virtual-goodies

Epic Games faced a $520 million lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission for duping players into paying for unintended goods.

What's the key learning?

  • Epic Games is in the spotlight for some design tricks to help pump up its revenue and that includes charging their cards hundreds or thousands of dollars for kids' in-app activities.
  • The FTC sued Epic Games for $520 million with the claim that epic was using dark patterns to dupe players into paying for goods they might not have intended to buy.
  • Dark patterns are manipulative or deceptive software design decisions that aim to get users to take some sort of action.

👉 Background: Epic Games is the maker of popular games like Fortnite and Fall Guys. And this biz is not small. In fact, it generated more than $6 billion USD in revenue in 2022 financial year.

👉 What happened: Epic Games is in the spotlight for some design tricks to help pump up its revenue. Many parents have been surprised to learn that Epic charged their cards hundreds or thousands of dollars for their kids’ in-app activities.

👉 What else: Now, Epic Games has settled a $520 million claim with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US, which claimed that Epic was using dark patterns to dupe players into paying for goods they might not have intended to buy.

What's the key learning?

💡 Dark patterns are manipulative or deceptive software design decisions that aim to get users to take some sort of action. This is an action that they might not have taken out of their own free will.

💡In the case of Epic Games, it was claimed that Epic:

  • Charged kids without requiring parent approvals for each purchase
  • Made it difficult to cancel their buys, or to ask for refunds

💡 And now, they have been forced to pay the FTC and give refunds to a whole range of shocked adults.

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