Epic Was Ordered to Pay $245 Million. The FTC Says It Has Sent “Nearly $200 Million.” The Third Round Was Promised for 2026 — and the FTC’s Own Refund Page Still Carries a July 2025 Date Stamp

There is exactly one authoritative page on this: ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/fortnite-refunds. We read it today. It is still date-stamped July 2025, and it says four things.

“The FTC is no longer accepting claims.” The deadline was July 9, 2025. That was 408 days ago. Nothing has reopened it.

“If you filed a claim after February 14, 2025, you don’t need to do anything else right now. The FTC is currently reviewing claims.” That single sentence identifies the people generating all of this search traffic: everyone who filed during the reopened window between February 15 and July 9, 2025. They were paid nothing in the second round, because the second round paid the people who had filed before February 14.

“We expect to send additional payments in 2026 after we have reviewed and validated all claims.” No month. No amount. No count.

“We will update this page when we have more information.” It has not been updated. There are 132 days left in 2026.

The underlying order, finalized in March 2023, requires Epic Games to pay $245 million over allegations that Fortnite used dark patterns to charge players for unwanted purchases, let children run up charges without a parent’s involvement, and locked some users out of content they had bought after they disputed charges.

Two rounds have gone out, and the FTC published exact figures for both:

• December 9, 2024 — 629,344 payments totaling more than $72 million. About half PayPal, half checks. The FTC put the average payment at about $114.
• June 25–26, 2025 — 969,173 checks and PayPal payments totaling more than $126 million, which works out to roughly $130 apiece.

That is 1,598,517 payments in total, and the FTC’s own words for the running sum are “nearly $200 million.”

Set that against a $245 million order and there is visible daylight. We are deliberately not converting it into a headline number, because the FTC has never published what portion of the judgment remains available for consumer redress, and the difference between a monetary judgment and a redress pool is not ours to assume. What we can say precisely is this: the FTC has published no figure for what is left and no date for when the third round goes out, and the agency’s last word on it is fourteen months old.

You cannot file now. Not through the FTC, not through a lawyer, not through any site charging a fee. Claims closed July 9, 2025 and the FTC states flatly that it is not accepting new ones. Eligibility, when it was open, covered being charged in-game currency for unwanted items between January 2017 and September 2022; a child making charges to your card without your knowledge between January 2017 and November 2018; or having your account locked between January 2017 and September 2022 after you complained to your credit card company.

The refund administrator is Rust Consulting, Inc. — 1-833-915-0880 or admin@fortniterefund.com. That is who to call about a payment you already received or expected. The FTC itself notes it “will never demand money, make threats, tell you to transfer money, or promise you a prize.” Nobody legitimate will ask you to pay to receive an FTC refund.

If a payment does arrive, it expires. Checks must be cashed within 90 days; PayPal payments must be accepted within 30 days. In the first two rounds, payment type was whatever you selected on the claim form — you do not get to change it now.

And a note on the many pages promising a “Fortnite refund 2026 payout date.” There isn’t one. The agency that would announce it has said only that it expects to pay “in 2026” and that it will update its page when it knows more. Anyone publishing a specific date is publishing a guess.