Epic fined €1.1M over manipulating children through in app purchases (nos.nl)

I used to be obsessed with in game skins as a teenager but I'm very thankful the game I played most didn't charge for them. But I remember freaking out at my parents when they stopped me playing a game one night because I wanted a new skin so badly.

I grew out of it, I can't help but feel the scarcity of such skins/items don't lead to anything good except manipulation.

Epic generated approximately $6 billion in revenue in 2024, just for comparison.

I'm on Epic's side on this one. Having things for sale in a game is different from "manipulating children" into buying things in a game.

I'm sure they will mourn this crippling loss of a few hours worth of revenue.

This is a slap on the wrist for a company of Epic's size. Anyone know if this comes with restrictions on future in-app purchases made by children, or if these already exist in NL and Epic was ignoring them?

Good. Now take on all the free-to-play game ecosystem next. I'm actually thinking about starting up a youtube channel on that topic - the dark patterns, the quasi-gambling, fake ads for medical products (e.g. fat-loss pills [1]) or financial scams [2], it's out of control.

[1] https://www.kino.de/tv/warnung-vor-fake-werbung-diese-produk...

[2] https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/tech/betrugsmasch...

That's tiny in comparison to the FTC fine. Epic settled with the FTC for more than half a billion.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...

Why use a non-English source? Doesn't that encourage people to reply to the headline rather than the article?

Why can I read and understand this article...

So it was basically worth it?

Epic really don't need to engage in such dirty tricks to get kids money; they do all that to each other. Kids with the default Fortnite skin are bullied, excluded. The social pressure is huge.

thats like 1 minute of fortnite revenue which is a ad masqueraded as a game

Roblox: Hold my beer

Where does the fine money go? To the victims?

So glad the courts are letting them run their own app stores.