Fortnite FTC's First Fine on a Metaverse Platform – But Expect More Soon

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If you or your kid played Fortnite between January 2017 and September 2022, you may be eligible to get a refund from a $520 million settlement between Epic and the Federal Trade Commission for bending online privacy laws protecting minors and getting those minors to buy in-game items from gacha-style* loot boxes. Go here to file that claim.

And if you don't need to file a claim, you can still marvel at two things:

• Wow, Fortnite may have 37 million paying users in the US — over 1 in 10 people in America! That's how many Americans with Fortnite accounts who are being contacted by the FTC. (Then again, the FTC may be messaging anyone in the US with a registered Fortnite account — I'm double checking this.)
• This seems to be the first of its kind: A successful fine/settlement by US government regulators against a metaverse platform.

There's been close calls before — for instance, earlier this year, Roblox started hiding ads from 13 and under players after an FTC complaint. But far as I can recall, the Epic case is the first one where US dollars earned from virtual world purchases were then collected by the Federal government to be returned to consumers.

This also means the FTC knows enough about how metaverse platforms work (or don't work for consumers) to start pursuing other policies on other platforms. I do know government agencies have been quietly gathering notes:

Since last year, officials/staffers with at least two major world power governments have reached out to me, asking for advice as to how they might regulate metaverse platforms. I won't name them specifically, beyond saying that they're from member nations of the EU/NATO, and that this is in addition to the EU Commission looking into metaverse regulation announced recently. I was impressed by the level of knowledge they already had about metaverse platforms and their underlying technology, most especially VR headsets.

So expect more like this soon.

* Speaking of which, remember when Linden Lab prohibited user-made gachas in 2021? Unsurprisingly, the company was ahead of the curve.

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