Epic Games has sped up repercussions for Fortnite players who used V-Bucks and refunded them through an exploit on Xbox, essentially getting the in-game currency for free.
As we moved into the weekend, the studio said it had now “fixed a delay” and would be claiming back any items that were bought through currency that had been refunded on Xbox or previously gifted from fraudulent accounts.
Acknowledging the system it uses to revoke items on Xbox between December 2024 and July 2025 “malfunctioned”, the company warned some players “may now see a message that their payment was reversed or refunded and see recent items have been removed, even from transactions from several months ago”.
It comes after some Xbox players abused an exploit through which they could buy V-Bucks through Microsoft, apply them to their accounts, and then refund them.
After clarifying this “does not affect regular purchases on Xbox or any other platform that weren’t refunded”, the Fortnite Status X/Twitter account added:
“Ordinarily, when a player receives a refund of a real-money Fortnite purchase, the purchased items are removed from their account,” Epic explained. “When V-Bucks are purchased, spent, and refunded, causing the player’s V-Bucks balance to go negative, items most recently purchased and gifted with the refunded V-Bucks are removed from the player’s account and the gift recipient’s account.
“Unfortunately, the system we built for this malfunctioned on Xbox between December 2024 and July 2025. During this time, players were receiving refunds, but the refunded V-Bucks and items purchased with refunded V-Bucks remained in the player’s account and gift recipient accounts.”
While Epic accepts that over this period most players “continued using purchasing and refunding in good faith as usual”, some “exploited the situation to make large numbers of purchases, often with many accounts. Some even set up shops to accept payments from players and gifted them items purchased with refunded V-Bucks”.
It’s taken so long to sort the issue, however, that when Epic began processing back-dated refund requests on Xbox on 4th September and confusing players, it’s now “making a correction to distinguish between accounts that made ordinary refund requests, and accounts exploiting the refund system”.
“We’re restoring the items that were removed earlier this week for players who made less than 7 refunds since Dec 2024. It was our fault that we didn’t update the V-Bucks balance in their account immediately as we should have. This will take a few days,” Epic conceded.
“The removed items will stay removed for anyone who received 7 or more refunds, and for items received through gifting from players who made 7 or more refunds during this time. This is the ordinary approach to refunds from our terms of service, and these item purchases were taking advantage of an exploit with the V-Bucks refund system.”
Epic Games recently claimed the return of Fortnite to iOS in the UK is “uncertain” as it’s been unable to bring the Epic Games Store to iOS this year, “if ever”, after the CMA – the UK’s competition regulator – has “deprioritised store competition entirely”, following the lengthy legal battle between Epic and Apple.
