Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Brother Black fly's left hand clue delivery! On the morning of December 20, Beijing time, it was reported that on Monday, local time, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Epic Games Company, the developer of the famous game "Fortnite", jointly announced that Epic Games would compensate 520 million US dollars to settle charges that the company illegally collected children's private information and seduced consumers into playing games.

Of the total compensation, Epic will be fined $275 million for violating a US privacy law, and will default to stricter privacy settings for teenage game users in the future.

The Federal Trade Commission announced that Epic will also pay $245 million to compensate consumers who have suffered losses. The Commission accused Epic of using the so-called "dark mode" to deceive consumers into buying game products that went against their original intention.

Lina Khan, chairman of the Trade Commission, said in a statement that Epic used default settings that violated the privacy of gamers and also used deceptive game interfaces to trick consumers, including children and children.

The FTC's heavy penalty on Epic comes just in time. The Trade Commission is currently carrying out heavy-handed regulation of the US game market. Just last week, the Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in court against Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of online gaming giant Activision Blizzard.

In a statement on Monday, Epic said it had abolished the unreasonable mechanism of winning games by payment and obtaining progress by payment in the case of two gamers fighting each other, as well as the "random booty box" mechanism introduced in 2019. In addition, the company will display a clear "yes / no" option box as to whether or not to save gamers' payment information.

For players who have suffered financial losses due to dark mode in the past, Epic says they can refund money through credit card channels in the future, and if a credit card holder can see unauthorized operations on consumption records, he can report to the bank and cancel the charging operation.

Epic said that in the future, the company will take more measures to protect teenage users, such as introducing parent control features that are easier to use, and will also require parents to provide passwords to authorize children's game consumption, and Epic will set a limit on game spending for children under the age of 13 in the future.

The Commission said that some Epic employees expressed concern about the default privacy settings for teenagers, such as the fact that the voice chat function should clearly allow users to choose before using it. The Commission said that voice and text chat functions must be turned off in the default settings of Epic in the future.

Some youth privacy groups in the United States welcomed the settlement agreement reached between the Trade Commission and Epic. Jeff Chester, director of the American Center for Digital Democracy, said that in the enforcement of the Federal Adolescent data Privacy Act, teenagers' right to data privacy should also be well respected.

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