We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players.” “The laws have not changed, but their application has evolved and long-standing industry practices are no longer enough.
“No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here,” Epic said. Epic froze users’ accounts if they tried to dispute charges with their credit card companies.Įpic issued a statement about the settlement and its plans to address the problems raised by the FTC. “Using internal testing, Epic purposefully obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find,” the FTC said. When over a million users complained about the problem, Epic allegedly ignored them. Players could accidentally buy things when attempting to wake the game from sleep mode, or by tapping the instant purchase button, located right next to the preview item toggle, for example. However, in cases like Fortnite’s, the problems are a little more clear.Įpic’s “counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration” tricked players into making hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted purchases, the FTC said.
You can influence user behavior by making one button blue and the other one red, but no one wants the government dictating the colors on websites. “There’s recognition that choices about platform architecture are within the scope of what regulators can go after, and there’s more thinking about requiring companies to consider other values in designing products.” (Disclosure: this reporter formerly worked at Consumer Reports’ journalism division, which is separate from its advocacy wing, where Brookman works.) “There’s definitely been a shift towards regulating design,” said Justin Brookman, director of technology policy for Consumer Reports, and former director of technology research at the FTC. federal regulators are taking up the mantle, too: the FTC held a dark patterns workshop in 2021. A similar UK law with the same name went into effect last year-netting a $30 million fine for TikTok-and New York state is considering an even more aggressive children’s design bill of its own.
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California passed the Age Appropriate Design Code in September, which obligates companies to prioritize kids’ safety and well-being in the design of online services.
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An update to the California Consumer Privacy Act last year banned dark patterns, a term for deceptive design.
They’re paying increased attention to layout and composition on the web.
Lawmakers have a newfound eye for the flaws of digital design. “The FTC has been doing work on deceptive design practices for years, but this is the biggest step up in terms of enforcement we’ve ever seen,” said John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, better known as EPIC (unrelated to Epic Games). “Protecting the public, and especially children, from online privacy invasions and dark patterns is a top priority for the Commission, and these enforcement actions make clear to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these unlawful practices.”Īfter years of discussion, regulators are zeroing in on the manipulative powers of digital interfaces, and the government appears ready to act against them. “Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fortnite users, including teenagers and children,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan in a statement.
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