You want to buy something in a video game. Maybe it’s a battle pass. Maybe it’s a Sonic skin. Maybe it’s the current Halo Master Chief skin. That one costs 1,500 V-Bucks, but V-Bucks only come in packs of 400 or 1,000. You now have 300 leftover V-Bucks and Epic Games has your extra money. It’s scammy and it sucks. Thankfully, it’s also going away.
“Starting October 14, we’re adding an Exact Amount offer to the Fortnite V-Bucks purchasing page that lets you ‘top up’ your V-Bucks balance to the exact amount needed for the item you’re trying to buy,” the company announced on Thursday. “Let’s say you want an item that costs 500 V-Bucks but you only have 400 V-Bucks in your account. You’ll be able to buy just the 100 V-Bucks needed.”
The improved payment option is coming to Rocket League and Fall Guys as well, and will be available across Xbox, Switch, PC, mobile, and…not PlayStation 4 and PS5? “We will work to make this available everywhere,” the blog post reads. Sony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Forcing players to buy extra currency by mismatching it with microtransaction prices is a tale as old as digital downloads on console. Platforms like Xbox were once infamous for making players buy games with points instead of real currency, a practice that didn’t end until 2013. It was such a big deal when it changed that Microsoft made the announcement at that year’s E3.
Fortnite‘s “top-up” option comes a couple of years after Epic reached a $245 million settlement with the FTC over “dark patterns” that tricked players into unwanted purchases.