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Image: Epic Games
Ana Diaz (she/her) is a culture writer at Polygon, covering internet culture, fandom, and video games. Her work has previously appeared at NPR, Wired, and The Verge.
Those who unintentionally made accidental purchases in Fortnite years ago are finally due for some compensation.
The Federal Trade Commission is forcing Fortnite creator Epic Games to pay more than $72 million in refunds to roughly 629,000 customers on Monday. Each affected person will get around $114 from the FTC if they successfully filed a claim. The payments follow a 2022 settlement where the federal agency alleged Epic Games “tricked” users into spending money on the platform.
The refunds will be distributed on Monday and constitute the first round of payments. A release from the FTC said the agency will “distribute additional money at a later date,” but didn’t specify any additional details. The government will be sending the money via check and PayPal. The FTC said recipients should redeem their PayPal payment within 30 days and cash their checks within 90 days, and those with additional questions should contact the refund administrator listed on the FTC’s announcement.
The payments are being issued following a 2022 settlement where the FTC secured $520 million after arguing that Fortnite violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and “deployed design tricks, known as dark patterns, to dupe millions of players into making unintentional purchases.” This set of payments relates to those who fall into the second category of arguments, and accidentally made a purchase during due to the duplicitous design of the game.
If you think you might have made an accidental purchase in Fortnite, it’s not too late to get in on the refunds. Those who suspect they were impacted can go and file a claim online today.
English (US) ·