FTC Prompts Fortnite Players Charged for Unwanted Items to Apply for Refund

Today the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it has started a claims process to provide refunds to Fortnite players who may have been charged for items they did not really want.

This follows a settlement achieved in March 2023, ordering Epic Games to pay $245 million for using deceptive methods in order to push players into making unwanted purchases.

According to the order, Fortnite employed confusing button layouts to mislead players into spending money on the game with the press of a single button.

On top of that, the FTC also claimed that Epic made it easy for minors to make purchases without any parental guidance.

With today’s action, the regulator has started notifying via email the 37 million people who may be eligible for a refund and is expected to continue with this process for about a month. 

Consumers will then have until January 17, 2024, to file a claim on the FTC’s website.

Of course, the size of each refund will heavily depend on how many customers do end up filing a claim, because $245 million isn’t exactly a big pie if 37 million people each want a slice. 

Fortnite is available on nearly every platform one way or the other, and as a free-to-play game, it focuses its business model heavily on microtransactions, often themed after popular IPs like My Hero Academia, Futurama, The Witcher, and many more.

In other FTC-related news, its legal proceeding against Microsoft over the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard triggered a rather juicy leak about the company’s plans. 

Source: MakeUseOf