Epic Games, creator of the popular video game Fortnite, was struck with the Federal Trade Commission’s largest penalty ever for a rule break this week.
The developer will pay $520 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act as well as for luring millions of players into making unintended in-game purchases using a technique called “Dark patterns.”
Fortnite is free to play and generates billions of dollars from in-game purchases, such as digital skins for players’ characters and seasonal “Battle Passes” that provide valuable 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.
“These tactics led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers,” the FTC said.
