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Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

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Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#81

Post by bena »

RussianCow wrote: post #38
bena wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it makes their kerfuffle with Apple look a bit different. Because Apple charges 30%. And Apple can keep that if there is a refund. In this case, Epic is returning money. They would ideally be net zero on this whole debacle. You mistakenly bought $10 worth of skins, Epic collected that $10. Then you get refunded $10, Epic returns that $10. In the App Store scenario. You mistakenly bought $10 worth of skins, Appl…

> And if this is just refunding the purchases, it's kind of a good deal for Epic. As they essentially got an interest free loan from their customers. Just a minor note: I believe credit card transaction fees are not refunded to the vendor, so there is still a non-zero cost to refunding customers which likely doesn't make it a "good deal". (Disclaimer: It's been over a decade since I did anything related to payments,…

No, that sounds if not outright correct, at the very least in the ballpark of close enough.

And I'm not totally up on the transaction fees, but they're typically in the low single digit percentages. And you only get hit once. So even on the higher side, you're looking at making up 3%. Which is way more likely than making up 30% in the same timeframe.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#82

Post by bm3719 »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #17

Quite frankly in-game purchases has destroyed an entire industry for me. Mobile games are so filled with this junk I don't even bother looking at them any more. I avoid anything on PC that has a store, repeating season passes or virtual currency of any kind. It's even coloured my view of the types of add-on DLC that 20 years ago would have been a legitimate expansion pack, purely because it feels too similar to the d…

I also think of the games market this way. It's bifurcated between single purchase and on-going, and I'm not interested in constantly paying for stuff or needlessly complicating transactions, so the latter doesn't exist to me.

I find the acceptance of in-game stores rather unfathomable, but apparently the market has spoken as it represents the majority of industry revenue. So, it's unfortunately not going anywhere. What's wrong with players willing to drop $1000+ on a single game and/or have their game mechanics and other activities tainted by constantly pulling out their wallet? I know people in RL that do this, some to great personal financial harm, and haven't really gotten a good answer yet.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#83

Post by Thaxll »

paulmd wrote: post #25
bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks. Hopefully steam resolves it, that's always the first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't c…

Most use case are not hacks aren't they? If you charge back because not happy for example? Every time you charge back Steam or Epic has to pay $10 or so to the bank if I recall.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#84

Post by tagyro »

My comment is going to get downvoted (or worse, ignored), but here I go again:

We, as software engineers (or working in the field), have the power to not implement these features when our employer asks us to do it.

Everyday we read about organisations using dark patterns in their (software) products and then we come to HN to complain about it.

How did these features get built? By whom?

Yes, I realise not everyone has the privilege to say "NO", but at least some of us can and should push back.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#85

Post by jabroni_salad »

Kiro wrote: post #51
bluetidepro wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you have never tried to use the support system of many of these services? Yeah, you may sometimes get a good rep that will actually help you and refund you. More often times than not you are forced to jump through massive hoops, auto replies, no help, etc. to the point that you have to do a chargeback. Also, chargebacks are not always a guarantee, VISA (or whoever) does their own investigation to make sure…

I refund routinely on Steam. The only times it doesn't work is if I've played more than 2 hours which seems fair. I don't see why I would be entitled to making a chargeback after I've played the game for that long. That would be like renting a movie, watch it and then make a chargeback.

> Why would you chargeback in Fortnite instead of just refunding?

It's really cool that Steam has a working refund system but I'm not sure it helps with the explanation of why refunding on Epic is an insurmountable challenge.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#87

Post by elpool2 »

degenerate wrote: post #9

> In Spring 2018, Epic executives and managers discussed adding a confirm purchase button to prevent accidental purchases. Though employees were concerned that “it is a bit of a dark UX pattern to not have confirmation on ‘destructive’ actions,” Epic feared that adding a confirmation button would add “friction,” “result in a decent number of people second guessing their purchase,” and reduce the number of “impulse pu…

When you unlock an item in a battle-pass, you have to hold down the button for about a second to unlock it (and there's a little progress bar animation as it unlocks). This is great! it makes it much harder to accidentally unlock the wrong thing with a single button press. The downside to a wrong click is pretty negligible though, you're probably going to unlock everything in the battle-pass eventually anyway.

But in the "store" part of the app, where you're purchasing things with the "v-bucks" in-game currency (which you've paid actual money for), the purchase was just a single button press. It was very easy to accidentally purchase when instead you meant to press the "back" or "preview item" button. Only recently did they change this to use the same "hold for 1 second" pattern already used in the battle-pass.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#88

Post by flangola7 »

Thaxll wrote: post #83
paulmd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks. Hopefully steam resolves it, that's always the first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't c…

Most use case are not hacks aren't they? If you charge back because not happy for example? Every time you charge back Steam or Epic has to pay $10 or so to the bank if I recall.

There are other reasons to use a chargeback than just fraud.

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#89

Post by ticviking »

vuln wrote: post #45
paulmd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks. Hopefully steam resolves it, that's always the first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't c…

You purchased _access_ to the media for as long as the company decides to host it. You don't physically own the media. Think of it as renting or a lease.

But they don't advertise our relationship in that way.

They say, "Buy for kindle" or "Buy in iTunes"

The contract they advertise doesn't match the fine-print in their clickwrap contract

Re: Epic Games to pay $245M for tricking users into making unwanted charges

#90

Post by indymike »

paulmd wrote: post #25
bluetidepro wrote: post #5

> Additionally, the order bars Epic from blocking consumers from accessing their accounts for disputing unauthorized charges. This could be bigger than people realize. This is very common in many tech companies like Uber/Doordash/Sony/etc. where if you do a chargeback, you often get blacklisted on their service. It would be amazing if this starts to end this practice, and you can actually have authority to get your m…

Came here to say this too. This just needs to be the rule generally. Steam and Amazon do the same thing - get hacked and get charged for some items, if you dispute the Steam charge you lose your $5000 account, that's not a fair playing field and effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks. Hopefully steam resolves it, that's always the first line of defense, but if they don't, you still can't c…

> effectively negates the protection offered by credit card networks

This behavior for smaller companies will likely result in fines from Visa, MasterCard and other cards. You really are supposed to treat charge-backs like you would losing an arbitration if you are a merchant. I've watched many a merchant do shady things around charge-backs and find out the hard way (I used to own an MSP, was enlightening). Most of the time it was trying to sue someone after losing, and then getting their case tossed because the judge treated the suit like they were reviewing an arbitration... and most of the time the merchants were actually in the wrong (as in selling defective goods, not delivering services or over-charging).

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