Fine of 419 million to Epic Games, creator of ‘Fortnite’, for breaching privacy regulations and cheating

Euskaraz irakurri: 419 milioi euroko isuna Epic Gamesi, ‘Fortnite’ jokoaren sortzaileari, adingabeen pribatutasuna urratzeagatik

Epic Gamesgame developer and creator of Fortnitehas reached an agreement in the United States to pay 520 million (491 million euros) for breaching the legislation that protects the privacy of minors of age and for introducing deceptive mechanisms to encourage purchases within their games.

As reported by the country’s Department of Justice, Epic has been fined 275 million dollars (260 million euros) for breaching the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa, for its acronym in English).

Specifically, the country’s Justice has determined that Epic Games commercialized Fortnite for children and knowingly collected information from children, including names, email addresses and identifiers to track their progress, purchases, settings, friend lists, etc. Despite this, Epic Games did not ask for consent of the parents, something necessary according to the law to carry out a follow-up of this type. It also kept the default communications privacy settings.

As part of this case, Epic will not be able to use information from minors that it collected illegally, it will have to delete certain data and you must ensure that voice and text communications from minors are disabled by default.

In a parallel case, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has forced Epic Games to return 245 million dollars (232 million euros) to consumers. This is because that money was obtained illegally by creating a series of deceptive practices and designs specifically designed to generate purchases by Epic, something known as ‘dark patterns’.