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A dad has blasted the makers of Fortnite after his young son was able to spend over £400 on the video game without his knowledge.

Mark, 50, has been left “fuming” after the money was taken out of his account when his 12-year-old son bought the virtual currency ‘V-Bucks’ in the popular video game.

And the Billingham dad - whose bank details were linked to his son’s gaming account - believes it is a major issue after hearing of colleagues who have went into rent arrears due to the same issue.

“I think this is a national issue,” Mark, a control room supervisor said.

“When we first bought the console my wife set up an account and secured it with a 15 digit password.

“In January or February I got my son a £50 user pass for Fortnite which lasts a year.

“Three weeks later I got an email from the bank saying I had gone over my overdraft.

“I very, very rarely go over it so I went to the bank where I discovered payments had been taken out of my account.”

Because the PlayStation account was set up by his wife, emails of the transactions were being sent to her.

But as she rarely checked them, no one had any idea what had been happening.

Over £400 had been taken out of his account so Mark blocked his card.

“I called PlayStation and spoke to PSN who take the payments, they told me the payments were all authorised.

“Basically I got told that nothing could be done. The set up is so non-user friendly, we thought that payments could only be made with the password.

“I told some colleagues at work who told me they had heard similar stories about friends going into rent arrears and things.”

Players of the hugely popular shooter game can use virtual currency known as ‘V-Bucks’ that can be used to buy add-ons like costumes for characters.

Around 1,000 V-Bucks costs £7.99.

Mark added: “My son is 12-years-old so it isn’t his fault, he had no idea he was using real money.

“He was devastated when he found out it was, he even wanted to sell his Playstation to reimburse me.”

TeessideLive has attempted to contact Epic Games and PlayStation for comment.