The money saved for the trip to visit family was spent by the nephew and niece on tons of in-game currency in Fortnite: Battle Royale.
What are V-Bucks? This is the in-game currency of Fortnite. With these V-Bucks, you can buy outfits, gliders, battle passes, or other cosmetic items. The cheaper items can be bought for 500 V-Bucks (about 5 €). Extravagant items can cost as much as 2,000 V-Bucks, which is about 20 €.
The purchased items do not provide any gameplay advantage. It’s only about cosmetic changes that represent the played character or their weapons and vehicles differently than usual.
How did the kids get the money? On Reddit, user A_Sad_Frog1 shares their experience in the “Today I fucked up” subreddit.
Because his nephew and niece do not own many games on their PSN account, the Reddit user (their uncle) let them play on his PSN account. Since all payments require a verification number, he was sure that they could not buy games using his bank information.
The kids apparently bypassed this security measure by first filling the PSN account wallet with money. As A_Sad_Frog1 writes, this payment did not require a verification number. Afterwards, the kids could buy V-Bucks with the PSN wallet money – without verification.
The problem was only noticed after 65,000 V-Bucks had already been purchased. The father of the nephew contacted the Reddit user and asked, “Your nephew is currently playing Fortnite and has 65,000 V-Bucks. Is that normal?” Over the course of a week, the children spent this amount of in-game currency.
In total, $531 was deducted over the course of a week. Most of it happened yesterday. When I wanted to check the damage caused, 20,000 V-Bucks had already been spent.
I saw that the PlayStation wallet can be topped up before every purchase. So they probably paid by first buying wallet currency, which apparently did not require a code.
A_Sad_Frog1 on Reddit
A_Sad_Frog1 then immediately disconnected all bank accounts from the account. After his search, he concluded that there was no way to get his money back. The bank could not retrieve it, and the PlayStation Store had no protection against accidental purchases.
Why wasn’t this noticed earlier? Many users on Reddit state that you are notified by email when purchases are made with the PSN account. A_Sad_Frog1 agrees that such emails exist. However, his PSN account is linked to an email that does not send notifications to his smartphone.
What was the money planned for? The situation worsens, as the money was taken from an account that the girlfriend of uncle A_Sad_Frog1 used for her savings.
She is visiting her family in America and had saved this money for that purpose. They had planned many activities together, which she will now likely be unable to participate in.
What happens now? It seems there is hope for this case. In the comments on Reddit, user zemorah writes:
“You can get a refund!
Who told you that you can’t? In the PlayStation Store, there is a one-time (as in once in your life) chargeback for exactly these cases. I know this because my son did the same thing. He spent about $400. I called PlayStation, and it took about 30 minutes to clarify the situation. After a few days, I had all my money back.”
Additionally, the community coordinator of Fortnite, “MrPopoTFS”, spoke in the thread and offered his help. Together they plan to work on a solution. Whether the money will be back in time for the vacation and if the trip can still take place as planned is still unclear.
That young players spend so much money on Fortnite is not an isolated case. An 11-year-old boy spent $1200 on Fortnite, and the parents sued Epic Games.
