Creator and Owner of Fortnite, Epic Games in a blog post Yesterday, announced that users of its digital storefront will periodically be required to enable Two-factor authentication prior to claiming free games on the Epic Games Store from April 28th to May 21st.
According to Epic, the goal behind this change is to encourage users of EGS to take steps to strengthen their Epic account security. If a user does not have two-factor authentication enabled on their account, they will see a message reminding them to enable Two-Factor Authentication when redeeming a free game.
“Two Factor Authentication Required: Claiming this free game requires you to have a Two-Factor Authentication setup on your account. Two-Factor Authentication provides an additional level of security to your Epic Games account and will help prevent unauthorized access.”
To enable 2FA users simply need to login to Epic Games Store and head over to the account settings page. Then click on the PASSWORD & SECURITY page, where the users will get 3 options to choose from and enable the method they are most comfortable with.
In January 2019, Fortnite came under fire when a security flaw allowed some hackers to access the Epic Games accounts of users who clicked a suspicious link. After the takeover, attackers could potentially use the accounts to purchase and gift the in-game currency V-Bucks. Epic was quick to respond and patched the exploit within a week, but according to some reports the security flaw was present for months. Epic was notified about it in November 2018 by Researchers at Check Point Research and it took them a few weeks to finally fix the security flaw.
