Forums

Topic: PLEASE HELP! I'm a stupid dad who can't set up parental controls.

Posts 21 to 37 of 37

mo_delaun

I'm using a PC but I have the console in front of me so I'm toggling between the two.

I have looked at my account on their web page and the parental control appears to be on. When I look at it the only options are to manage store settings and turn it off but it does appear to be mainly geared to purchases and does not say anything about the game controls. Anyway, it hasn't had any effect on the game on the console. It is still taking me to the same email set up page. This is beginning to bug me now.

mo_delaun

mo_delaun

Hi Woomy,

Just coming at this from a slightly different angle. The voice control feature under parental controls only appears to switch it off or on and does not seem to offer control over who my kid speaks to. Under normal game play without any parental controls, do you have a level of control over who you can speak to and who can speak to you? I'm thinking that if even if the parental controls are set, it appears that he would be able to talk to anyone on this thing. Is that the case or do you have the option to limit the voice so that only those within your group of mates can talk together?

Thanks

Edited on by mo_delaun

mo_delaun

mo_delaun

One other thing, the Epic account ID on the console (found in the Account and Privacy settings) differs from the one on my account page of their website.

BTW I know you are having a bite to eat so don't worry about answering straight away. I'm just rambling as I think of these things.

Edited on by mo_delaun

mo_delaun

WoomyNNYes

@mo_delaun voice chat is only on or off. That's it.

The only language control is if people text. Bad words are turned to "❤️❤️❤️❤️". I'm not sure how good that works though.

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

mo_delaun

so does that mean that complete strangers can just have a chat with you? I don't fancy that for him really. Can you mute people? I thought you could confine it to just his mates. Out of curiosity, does the Epic account number on your console match that on your web site account details page?

mo_delaun

mo_delaun

Woomy,

I am fading fast. It's 23.12hrs over here in the UK and I've been searching for an answer for over four hours straight now. I'm going to have to call it a night.

Thank you so much for all your help this evening. I'm sorry for being such a dumb pain in the a**. Thanks for being so patient my friend. I owe you a beer if I ever get to your part of town when we all get let out. If you don't mind keeping in touch, I might try a few things tomorrow and come back to you if I can put a few more thoughts together.

Stay safe and well

Mo

mo_delaun

WoomyNNYes

@mo_delaun You, too. No problem, my friend. Taking a break and coming back with fresh eyes can't hurt either, if you look into it again. Fyi, if you ever email epic games support, I emailed them back in february, and they got back to me in 2.5 hours. Which is respectable. I'm pretty sure they do not have a phone line, though, maybe you noticed that

Yeah man. Stay cool. Stay safe.

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

WoomyNNYes

@mo_delaun Yeah, if you've got other questions, just fire away. I check in daily. I'll see notifications when I check my email in the morning (I'm in eastern US, which is 5 hours behind London)

Yes, the EPIC ACCOUNT ID number in the game(on my console) does match the one on the epicgames website. Maybe that explains the problem?

Some online games only allow one game account per email (to prevent people from making lots of profiles & eating up server capacity, and to prevent cheating). But, I'm not sure how Fortnite/Epic Games works. If you're not sure what to do, you may want to email them. Tell them you already had an account, and now you're trying to make a second one for your kid with parental controls. Mention that the Epic Account ID's don't match when you log into EpicGames.

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

jjmaxwell

Hey Woomy and Mo! Did this problem ever get resolved? I too am running into a similar Dad/ Switch/ Epic parent controls log in issue. Any advice is greatly appreciated:)

jjmaxwell

jjmaxwell

@WoomyNNYes Hey thanks for the response! Here's my deal:
I have an epic account from playing Fortnite for years on IOS.
I set up Fortnite fresh on my son's Switch and went through the steps to get him set up and user named there on the nintendo (sounds like just like you did) and all works fine for him and we got the battlepass, etc.
The issue is when I try to go through to to Parental controls. It brings me to Meowsculces with little cat on his shoulders screen and I have two options but the option "Next" is greyed out so I have to go to "Setup Email". When I do that step it takes me to the Epic log in page that has Epic/ Xbox/ nintendo etc. I put my regular Epic log in info in but get the error "Sorry the credential you are using is invalid". strike one.

So I go to epic website itself to check I can log in and yes, I can log in fine on my email address. I'm also able to set up a new email log for my son on epic separately. So I tried that in the Nintendo log in page, and although it takes me past the "Sorry the credential" error page, the next thing it needs from me is to create a user name for the new account. Obviously this is a no go because we already have a user name. strike two.

So, I got back to the Epic set up screen on the switch, but this time I do the "Nintendo" log in, and I get to a page to agree to user agreements. Yay! Progress!. But then the next page is an error that says "This page cannot be displayed". strike three.

Some notes:
-I have checked on my son's Nintendo account in our family account and it shows epic as an allowed 3rd party.
-Fortnite is whitelisted on parent controls.
-I went into my son's new epic games account (set up via a new email address) and made sure to enable parent controls there and jumped through all those hoops etc. I have a pin code to use for that email if I'm ever able to attach it to his nintendo account.
-One last thought that I had was maybe the issue is somehow using my Epic account email as the parental control email? Like somehow Epic can't handle that being the Email associated with the Nintendo account? SO possible going through the steps to set up a brand new epic account with a totally different email might work? I really don't want to get 3-4 emails addresses involved if I can avoid it though, you know?

I hope that's vaguely clear of what I'm up against! At the very least , the kid is able to play right now. I jsut want to make sure I've got control of things on the backend if needed
Cheers in advance for any tips!

jjmaxwell

WoomyNNYes

@jjmaxwell If you want your son to start fresh with a new Fortnite game, I think you'll have to create a new Epic account with a new email address. Yeah, it's a pain, if this is the first time you discover this. Online games with a big progression system limit one online account per email address. They do that for a couple reasons 1. So people don't go nuts making accounts eating up the game companies' server space. 2. To avoid cheating: there can be ways cheat with online games if you make multiple accounts.

I'm fairly certain that's what the deal is here with Fortnite, and yes, I agree, it's ridiculous making new emails addresses so you can make game accounts for kids, but that's what the market is doing. In order to have a second Splatoon account for online matches, I had to buy Nintendo Switch Online family plan subscription, and use my backup email address for a second Nintendo account. "one online account per unique email" is a paraphrase from Nintendo Support, and Epic Games is doing a similar deal with Fortnite.

EDIT: Forgive me if I missed the issue at the heart of your problem.

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

jjmaxwell

@WoomyNNYes Thanks for the quick response. Duly noted and it makes sense.
Though my main point is that I Don't need/ want to do anything to my son's fortnite account through the switch (he's got the user name he wants and has spent xmas $$ on battlepass). I just want to be able to link to it as a parent to do the parent controls and allow certain spending and interaction with others.

I am going to try to set it it up as if I've never used Epic before and use a new email address for parent control and will let you know if that does it. I've also sent in screen shots and exlplanation to Epic and hope for some kind of response from them.

jjmaxwell

jjmaxwell

Set up brand new Epic account with a new email address. Went through steps to set up email in parent controls. Entered log in info on the switch, but once again ended up on a blank white page with Epic Logo the says "Sorry, an error has occurred that we couldn't handle".

It's all very odd to get error messages without any indication of what is going wrong. Seems like a small step might be being missed by me, but I'm at a loss for what it could be now that I basically started from scratch

jjmaxwell

WoomyNNYes

@jjmaxwell It's possible holiday traffic might be the culprit. There have been people who couldn't access eshop or download games since Christmas, and the error codes they go were codes given out when the servers are bogged down with traffic. I know EpicGames isn't Nintendo, but try again later, in case it's a similar issue.

Edited on by WoomyNNYes

Extreme bicycle rider (<--Link to a favorite bike video)
'Tendo liker

jjmaxwell

@WoomyNNYes OK! So my screenshots that I sent to Epic helped solve the problem. They were able to see that I had a Nintendo account w/o an email attached (I don't recall being asked to supply one when I logged in initially on the Switch). Here's the set up steps they sent. I had to reboot the Switch and once I did that it recognized the new email I had added for my son (and as was mentioned before, I had to use a Brand spanking new email address...). One weird thing is that Epic had me log in using my Nintendo credentials and it recognized my son's account without me doing anything. But I also have a Nintendo account, so if it had recognized my Nintendo account I'm unclear how I would have siwtched to my son's because it was automatic.
Any way , Cheers for taking the time to help. Hopefully this will help another Dad down the line!

Here's the Epic steps:
After checking our database, I was able to locate the Nintendo and the root cause of your issues. The Nintendo is connected to a "Nameless" Epic Games account, which basically means it doesn't have an email connected to it and it's not fully registered.

Before making any changes to the Epic account such as modifying the parental controls, you first need to upgrade that "nameless" account to a fully functional one. To do so, please follow these steps:

1) Go to - https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/home and make sure you're signed out
2) Click on the Nintendo Logo and sign in with your Nintendo credentials
3) After signing in a screen should appear that asks you to create an Epic Games account
4) Fill in the required details while making sure to use completely unique credentials
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please use an entirely new email during this step. If you use an email that's already in use on another account, you will receive an error.

Once that's done, the Epic account that holds your Nintendo will be fully functional and upgraded. You can either keep this account as your main, or connect the Nintendo to your other Epic Games account and have that one as the main.

jjmaxwell

Please login or sign up to reply to this topic