Last Thursday, I woke up to an interesting notification: My credit card had declined on an otherwise routine transaction. “Maybe I’m just out of money,” I groggily considered, early-day brain fog preventing me from entering a state of full-on panic. A few hours later, my bank informed me of the true culprit: Somebody had fraudulently obtained my card info and had been using it to make purchases for weeks.
These included expensive jackets, regular trips to a kava bar, multiple OnlyFans subscriptions, and nearly $100 worth of in-game Fortnite items. Fortunately, the bank was able to resolve the situation relatively painlessly, but it got me wondering: What happened to those Fortnite items?
The bank issued a chargeback to Epic, meaning the company would not get to keep my money. But Fortnite skins, emotes, and whatnot are digital goods, theoretically infinite in supply unlike, say, a nice jacket or an amount of kava that I’m not sure is healthy. If this person was allowed to keep the items, Epic would suffer no (immediate) material harm.
Out of curiosity and a small amount of schadenfreude, I decided to ask Epic how it handles these situations – how the company responds once it has received a payment dispute resulting in a chargeback. An Epic spokesperson pointed me in the direction of a bespoke page on the official Fortnite website concerning these matters.
“Once a chargeback is filed, we will remove any purchased items that are associated with the chargeback from the account,” the page reads, meaning that this random person whose habits I’d come to know a strange amount about by way of them robbing me almost certainly lost their ill-gotten Fortnite goods. Bummer!
They won’t be able to get the items back, either – at least, for a time. My largely-circumstantial nemesis split their in-game purchases between two separate transactions on two different days, meaning two chargebacks. Unfortunately for them, Epic currently employs a two-strikes-and-you’re-out system.
"After two or more chargebacks,” reads Fortnite’s chargebacks page, “the account from which the unauthorized purchase was made will be blocked from making purchases across Epic products for up to one year."
Epic used to be even stricter about this stuff. For a time, it would ban accounts associated with chargebacks, but has since made changes to “better account for certain non-fraud-related scenarios that could result in a chargeback.” An Epic spokesperson told Aftermath that such scenarios could include a player initiating a chargeback “for an unwanted purchase instead of contacting Epic's Player Support to obtain a refund for a real money transaction.” Following those changes, Epic claims to have restored at least some accounts that were banned under the previous policy.
The Epic spokesperson would not provide examples of circumstances in which the company now bans accounts. “We do not disclose what leads to a permanent ban so players cannot game our system,” they told Aftermath.
All of which is to say, at the very least, the person who spent nearly $100 of my – and by virtue of Aftermath being a subscription-driven site, your – hard-earned dollars on Fortnite is now bereft, certainly of items if nothing else. This might seem like an instance of justice being served, but I find it difficult to feel entirely good about any of it. People don’t generally steal for kicks; they do it because they’re in need of something, whether that means supplies and shelter or simple joys.
On top of the aforementioned digital and non-digital goods, the person who got a hold of my card info also spent a truly alarming amount on insurance. I can’t fault them for that! If I suddenly found myself playing with what felt like house money, I’d almost certainly do the same. I don’t think I’d buy Fortnite items, but that’s more a matter of taste than anything else.
Update 11/27/24: Clarified language around when Epic bans accounts as opposed to temporarily blocking their ability to make purchases.
