Epic Games to pay $520M to resolve FTC allegations
wsj.com
wsj.com
> That lawsuit also accused the company of illegally enabling real-time voice and text chat communications for children and teens in the game by default.
So voice chat must now be turned off by default for all children across America? How on earth is this supposed to be policed? Should everyone playing a game be required to upload ID? And what is the gate between on and off by default? A single button press?
This one doesn't make any sense to me. Voice chat is a staple of online games. Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense.
Sensible defaults are a good enough start and many regulations like this are based around best efforts , not absolute perfection.
I was signing up for all sorts of things when I was a kid. Nothing bad by any stretch of the imagination but I knew when they asked "are you 13" you just click "yes" and you're good to go.
Seems like a "feel good" solution that will collectively waste thousands of hours. I don't see why this is required, quite honestly.
Yeah it’s easily defeated but so is wearing seatbelts when you drive.
This is a similar selection effect to misspelled Nigerian prince emails, so I'd say it's a pretty good mechanism actually.
COPPA specifically calls out collecting device identifiers and cookies as personal information. Here’s the money line:
“It shall be unlawful for any operator of a Web site or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting or maintaining personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under this part.”
Note “directed to children.” If your game isn’t directed to children, you’re fine, but that’s a terribly fuzzy definition. In practice I would recommend taking the safe road and age gating for games. Again, I am not a lawyer.
Edit: I read the complaint and Epic was explicitly marketing to ages 10+, so this wasn’t at all fuzzy for them.
When you go to the shop to buy alcohol you need to show an id. So, adults are free to buy alcohol but not children. Why is this any different?
I understand that the problem comes from the amount of chat abuse in on-line communities. It not just swearing but the constant harrasement as soon as someone is losing a match, or even if they are winning.
I understand your concerns, but ignoring the chat problem paints a partial picture of the situation.
Online gaming where the only communication between players is jumping and canned voice lines is a wildly different experience.
It's actually probably the same problem drivers face. When driving, your brain kind of ignores that other normal humans drive the other cars, and therefore you are extremely judgemental of their actions, because you expect them to be perfect. This is why so many people road rage.
It's generally the ones that have children in them that get toxic - I would guess because children have less developed social filters and act out their negative emotions more readily than adults.
That is the problem. Kids are learning from each other to be harmful and hateful as there is no consequences for that behaviour. In other spaces they will be called out by adults, but game chats become a learning place for the worst behaviours at the same time that this games are rated as "apt for children". Rate them 18+ or kill the chat, it is all about not lying to buyers.
This war on "toxicity" at the expense of basic communication is insane, the match ends and it all supposed harassment ends.
Or you use the social graph to infer age: somebody who mainly plays with 10 year olds is probably also about 10. If they claim to be 20, require an id anyway.
Non-gaming companies deal with this all the time. It's annoying, but shouldn't require blazing any new trails.
All anyone cares about is covering their own ass, so it'd solve that issue, but it would have neglibile effect on anything real.
Source: Used the internet when I had to lie to every site about being over 13, so lied to every site about being over 13. Also vrchat requires being 13+, and boy, does 'requiring' it not accomplish anything at all.
I get its just trying to shift the burden onto the parents and the "lying child" but at the end of the day it just seems like it would collectively waste so many hours.
IMO, I just feel like it wastes too much time to justify itself. Hundreds of thousands of hours spent on a solution that relies entirely on the (unreliable) respondent.
Yes, we all know kids lie when they see the age verification, but the presence of age verification moves the liability away from the developer/publisher and onto the parents/guardian of the underage kid.
Obligatory IANAL.
No need for a photo ID, Epic is also under fire for the amount of data it already collects from children. They are well aware who is playing. [1]
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2022/12/record-se...
> Voice chat is a staple of online games. Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense.
It is so common sense that many games have minute long sections where it is outright impossible to mute trolls because the controls for voice chat aren't always accessible. Quite sure Fallout 76 didn't have any controls for it at all when it came out. The only choice in that case is to mute sound permanently, which is fucking stupid.
> Having a core feature included in a game by default is common sense.
I rarely use voice chat and the build in one even less. Call me old fashioned but I often just use a team speak server when playing with friends - once it works, it works for all games.
* Not a lawyer
It’s kind of like that musk thread from yesterday where a bunch of people showed up to defend the policy of banning links. If someone makes a rule, there will always be someone else who thinks it’s a good idea.
As someone who grew up on roleplaying games when I was about 13, and had lots of exposure to the adult side of life, I’m with you. It’s totally lame that the government is trying to regulate this.
How is playing games online where you can communicate with random people across the world without any sort of parental supervision possibly a good idea?? And why is it someone else's problem?
I don't mean this rudely, but how about actually doing some parenting?
I used to work with a guy who said the schools should be doing more to make children behave better, as if he was somehow absolved of any input. Absolutely baffling.
It helps to remember that life is complicated and there are limitless factors that can contribute to a family dynamic. Growing up my parents barely knew what the internet was and just associated it with "the computer". They attuned it as a "toy" and nothing serious. This allowed me unfiltered access to anything that was on the internet at the time.
You'd hope today's parents are more knowledgeable but I bet the majority of parents are just trying to get by and aren't ramped up as to how everything works today. They may be pressured to go with the technological flow head first due to society without fully knowing or controlling everything.
Anyways, back to my point, telling someone to "go parent right", especially as a non-parent, maybe you can approach it better.
And my main point that supervision and parenting go hand in hand doesn't require me to be a parent to know that, in the same way that I know that a handsaw can be dangerous yet I am not a carpenter. You don't need to be Parent of the Year or a genius to know that leaving children unsupervised with something can go very badly, like leaving them to play with plug sockets... My parents didn't need to get to their second child to learn that - it's obvious.
I'm not sure how else I could possibly word it to make such an obvious point more palatable, even though I am no expert in parenting. (I do have cats though and I know not to leave ANYTHING out because they wreck it.... That also doesn't take much to work out even if you don't own cats!)
Despite all my problems with Epic, I agree with OP here. This should not be Epic's problem. This is a problem for parents/guardians and the ESRB/PEGI. The ESRB and PEGI rated the game for 13+ and 12+ respectively, which I'd argue is appropriate, so IMO it should be entirely a problem for the parents/guardians.
If Epic had some form of age verification in place, past that point it's the parents'/guardian's problem whether the kid lies or the kid asks them to give their authorization. The liability ball would be in the parents'/guardian's court.
It's why all software and websites that handle data coming from underage kids always verify age or straight up don't handle that data (eg: Youtube Kids videos' comments, the lack thereof) at all.
Obligatory IANAL.
Translated to english this means they were marketing to 6-14 year olds.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/childrens-on...
https://recroom.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4426900227735-...
But this is basically the button press the GP was talking about, during sign up (which can be separate from the main sign up on the same device) the kid just says they were born in 1912 and now the mic works. Yes it's compliant with the law but it's the same problem GP was actually talking about - there is no real verification.
Having parental controlled accounts is a nice feature in general though, regardless of the legal requirements. Ultimately things like this come down to making good parenting easier and that can help.
So nothing is stopping them from purposefully getting a chat activated account, that's the point.
Can you quote it please, because I find that surprising.
> The FTC’s $275 million proposed settlement with Epic Games, owner of Fortnite, alleges the company violated the law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental consent and by enabling voice and text chat by default
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2017/10/...
Even if "by default" was the law though that would seem to make things even more theatrical and less pragmatic anyways.
You know, alcohol, weed, and porn companies have managed just fine with user affirmations.
That the FTC would know there is no reasonable way would be a strong indicator it is indeed not a reasonable law. The default is definitely why Fortnite got fined, and is a reasonable reason to be fined, but it doesn’t make the law somehow effective it just makes Fortnite wrong for intentionally violating the law. I.e. they should have be fined but not because the law protects children effectively rather it’s not up to them to decide if it does on their own.
Changing the default will certainly reduce the number of kids who are subject to toxic game chat. FTC knows it, I know it, you know it, and Epic knows it.
perfect is the enemy of good here, the other poster is arguing that because it's not perfect and is easily circumvented that it will have no effect, and, as you said, we all know this isn't true.
Once you climb out of the beginner ranks, literally everyone has found the communication settings and has adjusted them to their preferences.
I agree that most of the time, people don't change defaults. But isn't true for team games in my experience.
For the record, I’m pro games and against pearl clutching game ratings and “for the children” style laws, but I’m also not very sympathetic to big companies profits being a motivation for our lawmakers.
Fortnite was too blatant with it by doing this with all accounts including ones that had entered young ages but that doesn't mean other apps that follow the entered age are accurate it just means they aren't likely to get fined. Which sure - still fine Fortnite. Knowingly breaking a law because you want to doesn't make you exempt from the law even if the law is useless in practice.
I'd personally like if the law could be made into something more meaningfully verifiable I just don't think there is a reasonable way to do so. E.g. the UK has an opt-in requirement at the ISP level for porn access because "I am 18+" buttons weren't actually doing anything but making a legal bypass. Yet it's both a ridiculously bad solution and still easily worked around anyways.
That seems to be a trivial solution to the problem here.
In this case there is a small amount of work required of Epic to enable the law to be enforced in the ecosystem. Without that work to add profiles and enforce ages in the game, the OS/platform cannot enforce either. So it’s obviously moving things towards compliance to ding Epic here.
I shouldn’t have to go to the settings for every single game to find out if some random fucker is going to hear me crunching on chips.
So if you are making a Lego game, you’ll need to comply, but if you are making “Murder Sex Drugs III” then you won’t.
I'd preorder that game in a heartbeat.
I played a lot of Destiny, and it doesn't (didn't?) have voice chat. No problem. I also played a lot of Overwatch, which has voice chat that I didn't use. No problem. When I wanted to queue up for ranked, I would join a group and we would turn on voice chat. Also no problem.
I'm not sure why your position is "children should have to opt out of voice chat". Why not "adults have to opt in to voice chat"? After all, it's single button press?
I mean, if it's just turned off by default under the plain meaning of words... just turn it off for everyone by default, and if you want to listen to children calling you racial slurs, you can turn it on. No need to collect ages.
Otherwise, I've never seen much more than asking for your birth year to determine age, so it only affects children who can't figure out how to lie about their age. A skill that I've seen develop in minutes within the right framework.
The game industry loves the mainstream ignorance on this issue. Epic conveniently omits the fact from parents giving their kids Fortnite bux that their 11 year old kid is directly talking with adults twice their age.
Seems like there are lots of ways to confirm age, with various levels of sophistication and thoroughness. I think it’d be easy to improve on the status quo of a flat zero.
Default mic/camera etc. off - they can provided a nice little popup and have us turn it on.
Because companies will always push boundaries and cross the line, we need legislation unfortunately and can only hope the legislators don't fuck it up.
I don't like the idea of legislation requiring such a thing though.
It'd be nice to have 'best practices' oversight instead of lawyers but we're not that sophisticated yet.
And we don't really have a way of contemplating 'scale' aka once companies reach a certain size, their impact is greater and we have to be more careful.
It's exceedingly nuts to me that I would start doing something and all of a sudden random strangers could hear me or interact with me.
Default off for everyone, probably by law.
Anyone can just turn the default to be 'on' it's not a big deal.
Epic is as much of a monster or worse than Microsoft was in it's prime. It buys games then puts them behind it's paywall, ruining the games for people that bought them before. It uses it's Unreal game engine position to attack companies that make games in it's engine by releasing clones of them (ie, the Fortnite copy of PUBG). It sells games like Fortnite which I bought for $40+ back before it was popular, then it completely changes the game and makes it impossible for me to continue playing the game I bought.
I will never, ever, give any Epic software a place on any of my computers. Not buying, not "free", not anything. They still owe me $35 for stealing Rocket League and $44 for taking away Fortnite (the original game).
Your purchase of Rocket League came with access to the online service as it currently stands as a trust only relationship between you and the owners of the online Rocket League service.
I understand your pain here, and I don't want to defend Epic games, but as someone who has created multiple free cloud services only to have their costs or development requirements exceed my ability to maintain them I am weary of anything that would legally require me to maintain a cloud service past my desire to do so.
I'd argue the expectation of a multi-billion dollar corporation to maintain an online service feature for a paid product that they are still actively providing on other platforms is pretty reasonable. And that expectation should not add any risk of liability for individuals like you shutting down free online services.
It would come down to how the theoretical law was written. But just because a law can be written poorly doesn't mean we should seek to maintain the status quo.
If you bought it to play on a 32-bit Mac would they be obligated to port it to 64-bit? Would they be obligated to port an OpenGL-based client to Metal after Apple's deprecation?
You're telling me that because I can emulate the game it still exists. If I accept this premise than literally all games are linux games and the concept of platform goes out the window. It's absurd.
They're letting you play the game you paid for. I can understand being unhappy about the loss of a Linux client, but by all reports the Proton version runs better, so what's the actual problem other than your ideology? Epic is a corporation, not a religion.
It also runs perfectly fine with proton.
I just switched to using proton and everything worked fine.
Epic also drew criticism from the FTC for putting the "Purchase" button for in-game items right next to the "preview styles" button and offering no subsequent purchase confirmation prompt in the case of misplaced clicks. And while Epic introduced an "Undo Purchase" button in July 2019, it was eventually made much less prominent and harder for customers to find.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/epic-will-pay-520-mil...
This is a company that should be able to bypass app store restrictions?
Every company should be able to bypass app store restrictions.
I don't think the question is even framed correctly. Every iPhone owner should be able to bypass app store restrictions. Developers doing so is just a consequence of consumer choice.
Canceling a Fortnite subscription is as simple via them as it is on any other storefront: https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/fortnite-c5719335176219...
So all that's left is reversing purchases. You can do that through your bank or credit card issuer for any fraudulent purchase, if you want Apple to act as that gatekeeper instead you should make purchases via Apple. Are you saying all vendors should be required to hand 30% of all their revenues to Apple so it is slightly easier for you to reverse a purchase, even though there are already well-tested universal channels for doing it?
I've had to reverse purchases before without dealing with Apple and it has always been a smooth process.
Basically your argument seems to boil down to "my convenience justifies a 30% tax on all app developers". Are you in favor of moves like Apple requiring a 30% tax on IRL event tickets sold via services like Facebook, even though Apple provides no services to the live event operator other than payment processing? Apple even prohibited Facebook from disclosing the tax's existence.
How does the OS force an app not to disable functionality if you refuse to allow tracking?
>Canceling a Fortnite subscription is as simple via them as it is on any other storefront
Are we pretending that there is no such thing as a company that makes cancelling a subscription as difficult as possible?
>You can do that through your bank or credit card issuer for any fraudulent purchase
If you read the article linked above, one of the reasons Epic was fined half a billion dollars was that anyone who got their credit card issuer to reverse fraudulent purchases found that Epic banned accounts for that.
You seem to be ignoring reality here.
However, this situation is likely due to corporate America's toxicity towards chargebacks which are commonly issued due to the corporation's incompetence or malice.
The app store allows these sorts of things today.
If you have other priorities, other device options exist.
There are a number of factors and tradeoffs involved in deciding whether or not to buy an iPhone. Let's not pretend it all comes down to one and only one thing.
Not to mention that Android sideloading is kind of crappy and limited. Much more limited than Mac or Windows "sideloading". People seem to forget that Epic is suing Google too.
I prefer to deal with a platform that puts the interests of the customer ahead of the interests of the vendor.
Surely you're not claiming that literally the only reason to buy a $799.00 iPhone is to get a $7.99 refund on an IAP? I suspect that you yourself can think of other reasons.
Design? Durability? Features? Technology? Compatibility/Ecosystem? I mean, what's the reason to buy an Apple Mac, which isn't locked down to the App Store?
In my personal opinion, the crApp Store is the worst part of iPhone, not the best part.
> I prefer to deal with a platform that puts the interests of the customer ahead of the interests of the vendor.
Let me know if you find one LOL.
They have been caught once [0] and have been caught again this year [1] and generally have lied about accessing the sensitive data of it's own users [2], [3], [4]. Clearly the fines in [0] and [1] are extremely low and the fine must increase in the billions since these are repeated privacy violations and haven't learned anything from it.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/tiktok-kids-pr...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/technology/tiktok-childre...
[2] https://futurism.com/tiktok-spy-locations-specific-americans
[3] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-...
[4] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-pe...
Each
Year
You think that will change future behavior?
I doubt it.
I worked at a company where this happened, the legal polices that came afterwards were actually prohibitive. We couldn't shit without a lawyer.
CEOs have bosses and they don't like to lose money like this - it's a 'headline' loss as well, making it feel worse.
What remains to be seen is the nature of the change because so often it's just an over/under or 'bad' reaction, rarely do they get it right unfortunately.
I also never got "confused" about purchasing things but this is 2022 UI/UX.
We are all busy. We don't have time to learn where all the buttons are, what leads to what.
I see my elderly parents confused and bewildered.
Now I see myself bewildered on new apps that I just don't care to bother to learn.
Even Skype - the UI changes so often, every time I use it, I don't know WTF is going on. I can't find how to make the call, put on hold.
On my iPhone if I get a call while a call is incoming, I'm immediately pressed to 'MAKE A DECISION NOW!' with a bewildering array of choices while an alarm and buzzer says 'HURRY!'.
When am I supposed to learn how all of that works? By 'practising' incoming calls?
Technology is exploding, it's becoming too much for all of us - trust me there will come a time where you 'do not give a nut' about learning the UX for the next new thing, and then you're in trouble.
Given this I think we need to rethink UI a bit or stick to first principles.
And anything that involves privacy or money has to stick to those principles.
For the second part of tricking millions of players into making unintended purchases, idk about this one. In Fortnite for example, it's pretty transparent when you are paying real money. You either buy v-bucks to then purchase skins. Or you buy the season pass once and it's clear real money is involved. Anytime I talk with kids, it seems like they are fully aware it takes real money to buy them and they are either saving up or asking their parents for b-day/Christmas to get v-bucks or the season pass.
Really a good start, but if they are serious about doing something they should start looking at other companies too, and put in place big fines if you continue to implement such patterns in your games.
Don't even get me started on loot boxes and their gambling patterns, I have no sympathy for companies using such practices, and they deserve every single fine and a bit more.
While I'm sure it's been discussed to death already, if anyone isn't familiar with the predatory design of Diablo Immortal I'd recommend this video.
Like one section here says "no loot boxes since 2019 and never gambling"
Loot boxes are gambling.
"We respect our players by making our game pay to win"
But when we breed a culture of bullying and use behavioral science to get you to purchase cosmetics, that's fine.
Slimy, the whole game industry is slimy.
Epic allowed you to purchase loot boxes and get a random chance to get the thing you wanted as a result.
If it's something you can't pay for and it's intended to be a part of the way the game works, it's not intended to push you into spending money or anything like that, that's fine. Loot boxes are fun at the end of the day. That's not what this was though, this was gambling.
It's slimy, but per the legal definition, it isn't gambling.
Should it be illegal? personally, I think if it's targetted at children then yes.