By Nicolas Vega
Epic Games, creator of the massively popular video game Fortnite, was hit with the Federal Trade Commission’s biggest penalty ever for a rule break this week.
The developer was ordered to pay $520 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act as well as for tricking millions of players into making unintended in-game purchases using a technique called “Dark patterns.”
Fortnite is free to play and makes billions of dollars from in-game purchases such as digital skins for players’ characters and seasonal “Battle Passes” that provide useful items as a user spends more time playing.
In a release breaking down Epic’s violations, the FTC said that the game’s “counterintuitive, inconsistent and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the press of a single button,” including while players thought the game was in sleep mode or in a loading screen.