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PayPal Withholding Indie Game Dev's €600,000 Account
epee1221 writes "Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, the developer of Minecraft, posted on his development blog today that PayPal limited his account with unspecified cause on August 25th. Since then, payments for the alpha version of Minecraft have continued accumulating while Notch has been unable to withdraw them, and the account now contains over €600,000. PayPal recently told him it may take up to two more weeks for things to get sorted out and that if they conclude that there is funny business involved, they will keep the money."
This unfortunate news followed an announcement a few days ago that he and a friend would be starting a studio of their own to continue development on Minecraft and start working on a new project.
when it's paypal
Those guys are a law unto themselves, and their dispute resolution system adds new meaning to the word opaque.
I've had money removed from my account several years back (about £80) and spent 3 months on the phone trying to get it back, granted 2 of those months were talking to my bank (natwest) after being stonewalled by paypal, natwest decided at the end of 3 months to tell me they had no record of me ever making a complaint and that I would need to go to the police.
I swore off ever using paypal again But here I am, 3 years or so later with a paypal account I use regularly. Not having one is just far too much of a hindrance when it comes to things like using ebay, and paying for minecraft.
...it's best to avoid PayPal. Shady business practices, horrible support, and it's regulated even less than an American bank.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
PayPal are goons and apparently have a long history of such shenanigans. Why no other more reputable service has challenged them in the e-payment space is beyond me.
Never trust paypal with large sums of money. Period. I keep everything linked to my credit card so I can reverse charges at any time, and I do not transfer large sums of money using Paypal ever.
PayPal is not a bank.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
If paypal decides that there has been some "funny buisness" involved shouldnt they return the money to the origional accounts.
They're well known for pulling stunts like this. Guess there's one born every minute.
It is simple, do not use Paypal.
companies that handle payment transaction needs regulation. At the very least, the people who sent money via paypal would be reimbursement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If he had problems with PayPal, why he hasn't stopped or redirected payments.
Every time I start thinking about creating a PayPal account because it would be nice to give money to some of the web places that I frequent, but only accept PayPal some story comes along about how willing they are to screw you over. Hopefully this publicity forces them to do the right thing here soon.
I've heard so many horror stories from people using paypal, both from a purchasing and a selling point of view...but ::knock on wood:: I've never had a problem with them, whether buying or selling.
Is this stuff entirely random, or is there something that people do to piss them off?
Living With a Nerd
Almost exactly five years ago, Paypal froze $30k in Hurricane Katrina charity money raised by SomethingAwful, the story is here. They're still crooks now.
The CEOs were bouncing around in their piles of money so exuberantly that one got sick in his. The amount of money in your account fits our CEO frolicking needs perfectly. Thank you for the interest free loan, and don't ask about the funny smell on your money when you do receive it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
if you make 600,000 euros on an alpha version of the game, can't you afford to support payment options other than paypal?
Google Checkout
Sadly, this is quite typical PayPal behavior. The best thing you can do is AVOID PAYPAL AT ALL CO$T$... unless you like being nickle and dime'd and hassled around. And they wonder why so many of their users talk sh!t.
My boss and I started a small company 8 years ago or so .. One of our first transactions was 4 high end Sun processors for about 10K.
Paypal held our money for close to a month.
The excuses they came up with were crap every one .. ..
We were going to drive to Omaha ( or somewhere in Nebraska ) to work this out
what a load of crap
Okay, so yeah. That seems like a LOT of money to be traveling through the accounts of an alpha indie game. Maybe Paypal had real reasons to suspect something fishy was going on.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
anyone doing any kind of business that generates real money should get setup with credit card processing or some type of real bank. On top of randomly screwing people, paypal also nickle and dime people to death. Never will use paypal again.
PayPal is infamous for this.
Years ago, when I pulled my account information from them it was "common" knowledge in the eBay scene that if you were a seller and a buyer claimed it was a fraudulent sale, PayPal would pull the refund directly from your PayPal account without notice. If the funds were not in your PayPal account, they would pull it from your linked checking account, again, without notice.
The common strategy was to setup a second "dummy" checking account and link PayPal to that one. Whenever you had money in your PayPal account above a certain amount, pull it into your "dummy" account and then transfer the full balance _out_ of that account into one that isn't linked to PayPal.
Why someone would trust PayPal, who isn't a bank, with well over half a million dollars is beyond me.
For some interesting stories, paypalsucks.com
....how the hell the guy made €600,000 from Minecraft?
With the ridiculous number of stories and reports that have continually made it obvious that paypal screws people, I'm at a loss why anyone would use them for something this serious.
I mean, I feel bad for him and all, but at the same time - what a ridiculously stupid thing to do.
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
The people running this site have been trying to contact Paypal but get no response in trying to get things sorted out. amigans.net thread about this
Also, they are notoriously anti gun. I use gpal instead On the rare times I force myself to buy something on ebay, I try to pay without using paypal
Why does electronic fund transfer have to be so complicated?
With my bank I can hop online and pay anyone in the world any amount of money. Well, they seem to limit it to how much I currently have in my account, and if the person I wish to pay does not have a real address (No "221B Baker Street + 2i" allowed), I'll have to hand deliver it instead of getting them to post it for free, but there's little limitation there.
Oh, and did I mention that the whole thing doesn't cost me a cent?
Heck, the only thing it's missing is a few features like:
- The ability to transfer money anonymously (all the recipient would get would be a confirmation crypto hash or something, maybe something that I could reveal later in a court, but that they couldn't* pin on me)
- The ability to make a storefront so all of the fund transfer went through "Qubit's Quantum Quickymart"
- Better account management, and a way to group or tag business and bills vs. friends vs. impulse game purchases (The way GMail handles email is a good first shot at a UI)
The bank isn't making money when I transfer funds, but they don't care -- they're already making money on the stuff I have sitting in their coffers.
So why are we stuck with PayPal, which is pretty much a
- Shady
- Costly
- Annoying
- Duplicate service
??
Hopefully some bank (or series of banks) will make this happen for us. Moving money around shouldn't be anywhere near this complicated!
* Says the power of NP.
coding is life
When it comes to smaller amounts(under 5k), it's a toss up on using Google Checkout or Paypal. But anything over that, and you're just asking for trouble. These guys were way past to point of needing a real credit card processor. With that kind of money, it makes a lot more sense to just get a merchant account. Look at Paypal like a piggy bank. It's fine for loose change, but you wouldn't stick your retirement money in there.
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Several years ago I had a similar experience (though not on nearly so large a scale) where I had sold an item online and had a couple hundred in my Paypal account as a result. I could not transfer the money out without becoming a verified account, and for some reason Paypal would not let me verify it. After frequent calls to their tech support and trying everything I could think of, the simplest solution was just to close my account because then they just send a check for the balance and I haven't been back since.
I go to the game's homepage, and I see a video about rollercoasters, and not gameplay.
I browse around the site, nothing. The only, ONLY description of the game is, I quote, "Minecraft is a game about placing blocks while running from skeletons. Or something like that..", followed by the rollercoaster video, and then "The game is a lot like that, but also has enemies and cave exploring and mining and farming and flowing water and dynamic lighting and a huge (huge) randomly generated world map."
Yeah, thanks. I've never heard of Minecraft before, and I'd guess that few people have. So what is it - a rollercoaster game with zombies and farming?!
Anyway...
The pre-purchase page says "If you pre-purchase now during alpha, you pay just 9.95!"
If we round it to 10 EUR, 600k is sixty thousand people paying for something that is basically entirely unknown and isn't even described on the website.
And PayPal freezes the money? Gee, what a surprise.
This event is not uncommon with Paypal, although most amounts aren't this large. Keep a news feed on Paypal and you'll read stories about this weekly.
Paypal needs to be brought down hard and made to end this foolishness once and forever. Our government, who seek to regulate banks and Wall Street to death, are curiously hands-off when it comes to Paypal. Is The Fix in?
If the government won't fix Paypal, then we need a good, honest, alternative to embrace. An equivalent to the Android antidote to iPhone/AT&T. There's a market opportunity there for a proper competetor once the anti-trust authorities break down the manditatory eBay+Paypal linkage.
Oh, wait! That's the very same government who does nothing against Paypal now.
I guess we get the government we deserve by voting these latest clowns into office.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Who would leave 600k eur on a paypal account? it's ridiculous and plain stupid. Everybody knows fuckups happen with paypal, why keep money in the account at all?
paypal is evil... don't do business with them.
So let me get this straight- this guy made 600,000 pounds in 2 weeks with a buggy version of a game that looks like someone overlaid wolfenstein textures on a bunch of 3-D cubes that you run around and hit things with a club in?!?!?
What the heck am I doing at a regular 9-5?!?!
are terrible. I sold a laptop on there this past weekend for $1500. eBay charges me $70 for the sale, mind you that I didn't pay for extra pictures or bold print. Then PayPal takes out $40 for the money transfer. eBay made $110 off of the auction which is ridiculous. I canceled my accounts.
This is how PayPal makes their money.
I just canceled my account with this story as a reason, join in on the fun people!
I agree with your post in entirety, but having already made the mistake this needs to be seriously escalated. 600k is way too much money to take chances on.
Guys, Paypal has history in a large class action over frozen assets.
Forbes in 2002:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/03/08/0308paypal.html
It's funny, in that article circa 2002, Forbes thought Citibank's C2it would crush Paypal. Didn't happen.
Now, the British who know something about World Banking, might take it with MoneyBookers.
https://www.moneybookers.com/app/?rid=3809503
Either way, Meg Whitman knew the Ebay ship had sailed, she got out why the getting was good.
In Holland by local law every transaction bigger than 10000 has to be reported; as well as accounts quickly increasing.
I can Imagine paypal also being subject to laws like this ?
Just got this email 45ish minutes ago for both of my [separate] PayPal accounts:
PayPal Annual Privacy Policy and Error Resolution Notice
Goes into the usual yadayada about cookies/tracking/IPaddresses and such, but also explains in much detail about the steps WE are required to take in order to recover funds in situations similar to the topic. It's not their responsibility, nor do we have much time to initiate the process.
Paypal is for small sums only. Never trust them with an amount you cannot afford to lose.
Money laundering.
I hope this helps raise the Slashdot journalism above ZERO.
Yours In Ashgabat,
K. Trout
... in a vacuum. they must have employees and there must be some folks around here that work for them and are (possibly) closer to the top of the food chain.
If you work for PayPal.. care to explain why I can't just call up a person on an 800 number like I can my regular bank and have that person take care of whatever?
Can someone who works there explain any of the info here?
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
.....an easy way to get Slasdotted aka free advertising on a crappy game. Has anyone actually confirmed this claim of Paypal wrongdoing, which was in a blog the developer himself posted? Seems like a lot of people here are quick to believe a story from a guy who obviously needs advertising on a fledgling game.
We all know PayPal sucks. It's a given these days. I'm more interested if anybody has had bad experiences with MoneyBookers.com.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Seriously, do they doubt the veracity of the horror tales?!
Blar.
And why would anyone let their PayPal balance reach 600,000???
It's not like they are FDIC or pay great interest rates.
Very suspicious!!!!!
In 2003, I sold a radio at a hamfest for about $800... the guy dropped it at some point on his way home and tried to make me give him his money back.
I refused, naturally, but since he had my email address, he somehow managed to get Paypal to take the money right out of my checking account and give it to him, even though the transaction had nothing to do with Paypal.
I never did get that money back... or the radio.
This kind of service would be ideal for two purposes:
1. Terrorism financing.
2. Money laundering.
I don't know US regulations, but here in Poland this matters are tightly regulated.
Banks, insurance institutions, casinos and Civil-law notaries must pass informations about money flows to ministry of finance, where this data is processed.
All this anonymity you postulate, would cripple such systems, therefore it won't be allowed.
I hold my nose every time I am forced to use paypal to make a payment to some one online because I bought something from them on ebay. These sellers are fine, I have no problem paying them. I just wish they knew that there are paypal alternatives out there. A few more stores like this and maybe they'll start noticing;
That's just a few.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I have used PayPal for selling goods and running a company for many years. After my loss of my first account for unknown reasons. After that I would setup 1 account for the store and have 3 back ups, this would limit my site from getting shutdown and unable to except any payments. I also setup a credit card processing system myself and offered items cheaper if they would use this method. I also on made sure on each paypal order the user must have a verified and confirmed address. I would also use geo-tracking along with a phone system to make sure each buyer was who they claimed to be, the reason for all this was there is a very high rate of stolen paypal accounts, or kids using parents paypal accounts or credit cards with out them knowing and one quick call by the parent to the credit card company results in a charge back dispute which will end up in me losing no matter what, unless an item is shipped with a tracking number to the address that is confirmed. Anyways after doing all these types of things to help protect me worked out well for a while I was able to detect false buyers trying to steal goods. I even came across one child who used their parents credit card on my credit processing system. I ended up talking to an adult on the phone, it was the 3rd time this had happened to them. Turns out there child was stealing the credit cards and using them to buy things online, the family was shocked of course. Anyways all in all this did not save me in the end, I ended up doing $20k in sales in one weekend and my account was frozen. I sent in all the required info and never got any details from them. I know paypal has a bad history of things like this and I am not by far a fan of paypal but there are sometimes more to it then one thinks. On all things that do not have to be shipped, you will always lose a charge dispute in the end.
The only way I would use PayPal to collect payments is if I regularly cleared out the account. There is little or no recourse if they decide they're keeping your money.
Get a paypal account and a checking account to link it to. Anytime money is received, move it OUT of your checking account into another account at the same bank, which should be instantaneous. Do this daily. If paypal decides to screw around, they can't pull any money back, and you're never more than one day in the hole. Immediately stop using that paypal account and either set up a new one, with a new checking account, or stop using it until the dispute is resolved.
Ultimately, however, if you can afford it and your credit can handle it, just get a merchant account and accept credit cards directly. I'm sure there are people that only do paypal to paypal, but many more use credit cards through paypal and can probably pay with a credit/debit card if paypal itself wasn't an option. And of course, anyone can go buy a throwaway debit card if they really need to. Then just keep paypal as an additional option, but discourage its use.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
If for no other reason than to stimulate competition in this area, everyone should start using Amazon Payments whenever possible. PayPal has been forging their own rules for years. I once had someone do an "instant transfer" from my account for $500 to an online casino that I didn't authorize. PayPal said the account wasn't hacked but couldn't explain how the transfer was completed. Fortunately I caught it before it cleared my bank account and had the bank do a stop payment on the transfer. This got ME black-listed at PayPal for several months even though they had been contacted by me, my bank, AND the casino saying that the transaction was never authorized! If I hadn't managed to stop them I'm sure they would have held that money for months. This kind of behavior simply has to stop. Hopefully once Amazon Payments becomes more widely used, PayPal will stop acting like they answer to nobody and realize that they need to make improvements not just make money. As far as I know, Google Checkout doesn't allow transfer of funds for any reason, only for the sale of some product or service. PayPal and Amazon Payments let you send money for any reason at all.
As soon as you get the email notification someone has paid you get that money out of there. I never have more than 99 cents in my account for over 12 hours. Never.
The way to do a merchant account, if you're serious, is to go in person to a big bank, where you have other accounts, and open a business checking account or two. They'll want to see various documents. Do all that. You may have to put down a deposit if you're a new merchant, but that's negotiable. Then, when you start accepting payments on line, find a credit card processor who will connect directly to your bank. The legit processors, like "authorize.net", will do this.
When you do it this way, the money goes directly from the customer to your bank account. There may still be chargebacks, and the bank may place holds on your withdrawals. But the money is in your account, and subject to published banking regulations. Chase is considered the big dog of banks for merchant accounts.
Avoid PayPal, "Value-Added Resellers", and other non-bank middlemen. If you have to use a "merchant service provider", pick one that's owned by a bank, and deal with them directly, not through some reseller.
Of course, you have to be a legitimate business to do this. Your business licenses and D/B/A names should be current, and having a Dun and Bradstreet rating helps. You have to have a good credit rating personally. And if you have too many chargebacks, the bank will dump you, so you have to keep your customers happy. Otherwise, you get kicked down to the sub-prime merchant account market, which is not a happy place. You'll pay more periodic fees, but lower per-transaction fees.
Incidentally, don't keep more than $100,000 in any one US bank. Banks go bust all the time. 10 more banks went bust last month.
... and start filing complaints with these helpful people. Also start talking with the various Finance Committees.
As long as PayPal pays interest it shouldn't be a problem.
You have to wonder if this is their way of dealing with accounts payable shortages. Find small accounts that move large amounts of money, seize it indefinitely and discourage pro-bono lawyers from nailing their heads to the wall.
No matter what kind of agreement you have to sign with PayPal, how could this possibly be legal? If they decide there's something fishy going on, they're going to keep the money? If there's something fishy going on, shouldn't that money be given back to the buyers or remitted to the government?
I'm sure Paypal has those funds sitting in an account gaining a good deal of interest right now.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Well he certainly couldn't have gotten better advertising.
I have never heard of "Minecraft" until today...
For those doubting that the game has sold 60k copies. Seananners (youtuber from machinima with 250k subs) has made a whole series of videos of him playing and "casting" the game. The first two have 250k and 200k+ views. You cant have much better viral marketing than this when it comes to gaming. No wonder the game sales blew up in a short time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANgI2o_Jinc&feature=fvst
If you buy through Paypal and receive the product via a download, there is no guarantee that the product got into the hands of the legal owner of the credit card.
So with stolen credit cards or Paypal accounts, some people must have been downloading the game (or however its registered). When the rightful owners found out, they had the charges reversed. Leaving Paypal to prove that the money wasn't indeed stolen.
Paypal offers protection only if you send to 'verified address'. If you send the product to some random address, then you are taking a risk. Likewise with activation codes.
If Bob.Smith@hotmail.com trys to buy something from you using a Paypal account assigned to Nancy.Smith@google.com, your an idiot if you send the activation code to Bob.Smith@hotmail.com. Activation code should only be sent to Nancy.Smith.
Bottom line, if he has 600,000 in the account, you can bet Paypal was just hit up by a credit card company to return some of that money. Paypal is just trying to figure out exactly what has to be returned. If its a lot of accounts, Paypal might freeze the account just to see how much money needs to be returned. Eventually, when whatever statute of limitations runs out, he will get the balance (Paypal of course gets the interest over those many months).
I've had 0 problems with Paypal. I only ship to verified addresses.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
...how a game in the alpha stage by an independent developer that a lot of use haven't heard of before has managed to make close to a million dollars in such an incredibly short amount of time? Don't get me wrong; I have had my share of headaches with PayPal, and I definitely agree that they suck ass on an epic level. But something about this seems a little odd to me. His account was suspended just a couple of weeks ago, and there's now 600,000 euros in it, which means that (at the exchange rate at time when I'm typing this) he's got 763,800 USD in there now. So either he was using his PayPal account as a bank and just letting the money sit over a period of time (which doesn't seem likely...who the hell lets that much cash just sit in an account without spending or investing it?) or most of it came in within a span of about 2-3 weeks. An indie game, in alpha, pulling in $250K a week in sales? Really?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Before you say "stop using PayPal and start using something else", what else are we supposed to use?
Google Checkout, for example, is only available in the USA and the UK.
Another thing about PayPal is that it's extremely simple to add to a website. All you need is a few lines of HTML and you have a shopping cart and payment system.
Stories like this are quite common with PayPal. On the other hand, the alternatives aren't necessarily much better. Bank transfers are a hassle, especially international transfers, and may be expensive, too. For small amounts of money, they are often not worth the transaction cost and the hassle. Credit card processors often charge high monthly rates, and/or allow buyers to completely bankrupt the seller by calling for a refund, which will be deducted from the seller's balance, with an added reprocessing fee that the seller gets to pay.
I reckon that, by comparison, PayPal is relatively cheap and easy. You can mitigate the risk of them locking your account by not keeping a high balance. Also, IIRC, in the European Union, they are regulated like a bank and cannot easily pull stunts like they do in the USA.
I am sure there are better alternatives, so let's hear them! The problem is largely network effects: banks, credit cards, and PayPal work, because many people can send and receive funds through them. If we all get accounts on a better system, using that system becomes a more viable option for those wishing to exchange funds online.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
EBay is the real problem. The fact that they require payment with PayPal is what makes PayPal so popular. Nearly everybody I know uses eBay or one of their subsidiaries. Sure, there are some eccentrics here on /. that abstain, but they are a sliver of the population.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I think Interac disagrees with you :-)
The US needs to get rid of their various walled gardens.
If you are going to take hundreds of thousands in payments then surely registering as a card merchant would be a safer bet?
PayPal are ok for a few ebay purchases, but for receiving payments they leave a lot to be desired.
Sounds like fraud or grand theft.... it would be if anyone else did it, why is PayPal so privileged and above the law, that they can keep their customer's money, if they are just a payment processing service the person hired to you know... accept payments and remit to them?
That is some serious chump change for PayPal to be stealing....
I used to work in that hell hole of a company, so I'm posting this anonymously. Here's what happened from the perspective of an insider:
PayPal monitors accounts for trends in activity. This is to prevent accounts from being stolen/hijacked and used to launder money. If someone is running a pyramid scheme, PayPal would notice eventually that an account is getting funneled lots of money from lots of different accounts and flag that for review as suspicious.
What happened in this case, is that the indie developer fits that profile. An upstart account is suddenly receiving tons of money from tons of people for reasons unexplained. What the company does in this case is freeze the account and challenge the account holder to justify the account activity. If it can be justified as legitimate commerce, the account is freed up and can go on its merry way. If it was fraud, the account was frozen and the money can be rightfully returned to its owners.
PayPal is really a soulless asshole on the internet, but at least there is some reason behind it. I'm sure this is a hardship to the developer, but with a little effort they should be able to get this squared away.
I guess that our bank is one of those that doesn't allow it, then.
Were it not for her putting PayPal as the main eBay payment processor, this shit would have never happened as PayPal would be DEAD.
Those of you living in California, DO NOT VOTE MEG WHITMAN IF YOU HAVE HALF A BRAIN.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
600,000 euros in a month's worth of sales for an alpha release indie game? Must be damn good! I mean, at that rate of sales the game will top Starcraft as the number one selling game of all time in about a year. Starcraft took twelve years to reach that figure, but I'm sure this is much better than Starcraft.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Burn PayPal instead!
Ahhh that is good to know - mine (BMO) doesn't allow use by small business... hmmm at least not incorporated ones,,, I'll have to ask what their policy is on unincorporated small businesses, Might be a reason to change my bank. Which ones do you know of that allow this?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Why is PayPal the issue here? I looked at the demo of his game, and it appears to be a little 3d java applet where you put in blocks and take out blocks and nothing else happens. It appears to be of no more complexity than many college group software design projects.
What, pray tell, has he done, that merits him receiving Seven hundred and fifty thousand USD in contributions in sixteen days to promote and continue development of this app?
That values this java app at a $16M USD yearly revenue? I see no reason at all why it's unreasonable to set off an investigation into fraud or embezzling here. And if it is legit, hell, I need to get into making crappy Java apps.
Maybe we should do a basic sanity check and ask ourselves, how much did the best selling game of all time make? Starcraft made 11 million dollars in sales in 12 years. If the game is actually selling 600,000 euros per month, it will top 11 million in a little over a year.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Last I checked, it still doesn't have a donation option. Ok, there's one for registered non-profits... But for those you have to send in some IRS forms and all that crap. But if you're an individual accepting donations for your software project or online media, is it really necessary to go through all those hoops for that?
Instead the only way to accept digital busker style donations via Google Checkout is that you have to set up a tiered system of donation amounts. And then hope somebody doesn't get too confused by having multiple "sale prices" for something that also can be had for free. Also setting up the various donation amounts means quite a bit more work on your end.
Maybe Google will catch on and allow other donation types where the person sending the money can set the amount. But so far no dice.
Paypal, despite their problems allows people to set donation amounts and doesn't require the receiver to be a non-profit for this type of transaction.
...an easy way to try to perform some damage limitation by trash-talking one of his company's victims on Slashdot.
Tell your boss to quit fucking around and give the guy the money he's earned.
When are people gonna learn NOT TO USE PAYPAL FOR ANYTHING IMPORTANT. He should have withdrawn little by little until he could afford a more serious merchant scheme like VISA. People who wish to do online shopping should dedicate a small account in their bank to link with their credit card so even if they get scammed of their info, it will still have a small impact. Also put a credit limit on the card so it cant be overdrawn. Regularly you pull money from your 'online' bank account to your main account. Too much work ? Well, it can cost you 600K euros. No-brainer. Come on, PayPal must be legendary for their shady practices by now.
Can I light a sig ?
Selling an unfinished product, and having substantially amount of success at it will trigger PayPals fraud department.
Sad, but true...
Okay, there we go. 130k sales total? Where did the other 470k come from?
Stop reading things into my statements that just aren't there. I never said the game was crap. I never said anything about the quality of the game at all.
I am directly suggesting that a large deposit was made, by the developers, in order to do three things: get the account locked, garnering free publicity, and making it look as though the game is far more popular than it is.
Dirty pool, man. And it's an abuse of Slashdot. You want advertising here? Pay for it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Paypal needs to be shut down until regulations are in place that spell out exactly what Paypal can and cannot do with money that obviously does not belong to them.
So? It still shows that the idea that this game made 600k euros in sales in a month is ludicrous. It didn't.
Here's my theory. These guys had some venture capital to start up their studio. Knowing Paypal's policies, they deposited the money into Paypal knowing full well that Paypal would lock the account. Then they screamed about the injustice to everyone who would listen. Now, everyone knows that this game is hugely popular, why just look how much money they had in the account!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So PayPal freezes his account, as they're apt to do randomly and without good reason, and instead of switching to say Google Checkout or Amazon Payments immediately, he just waits till 600k piles up and then complains on the internet?
Yea I feel bad for him, but he shares the blame.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I had to deal with the same shit two weeks ago except it was $2,000 USD. PayPal blocked my account until they could contact 6 people I made eBay sales to. I don't know if it was the Patriot Act or what, but it was annoying as hell. I could not take any of the money out. After two weeks, they finally removed the ban... I'm currently looking into other sale sites and Google Check in as an option because I never want to have to deal with that again.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Really? When they say they only made 130k in sales, where did the other 470k come from?
This is a cheap publicity stunt, nothing more.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
> Yeah, thanks. I've never heard of Minecraft before, and I'd guess that few people have. So what is it - a rollercoaster game with zombies and farming?!
Just how uninformed are you? Minecraft is a lot like dwarf fortress with only one dwarf (but you probably don't know what *that* is, either).
Next thing you know, you'll say that you can't work Google, either. Incidentally, yes, I really do believe that they're making this money legitimately. Heck, even dwarf fortress got $24k in one month a while ago. Check out their announce forum. No I won't link it, you can google for dwarf fortress, then look at the most recent monthly report in the announcements forum on your own... looking stuff up is good for you.
Poor, Sweet commodore64_love... You see life is not that fair.
> If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller.
That's called a chargeback. When you use PayPal, you waive your right to a chargeback and agree to use Paypal's "dispute resolution mechanism".
> PLUS paypal is supposed to provide seller protection if the item was shipped to a verified address.
Yes, I thought that too. But one time I had to use protection I found it has loopholes eBay use to shirk their responsibilities. Like their infamous 'funds protected by FIDC' slogan, all that meant was their own bank accounts were protected by the FIDC, just like any other bank account. It gave a false sense of security, just like Paypal 'protection'.
> If it were me I'd track down the buyer and demand back whatever product he stole. You have the address.
He could be on the other side of the country. Are you going to drive across the country like that mad daiper-wearing astronaut to corner them? Unless it's a big ticket item you would spend more on gas? Even if they did live close you would need to take them to court which could take $$$ and years.
When Paypal locks an account for bogus reasons has anyone tried reporting it to the police or FBI as theft? If anyone in Paypal has ever muttered a word about using these policies to make money then its a conspiracy.
And as for the lard asses in Congress, it's appalling they have done nothing to legislate to bring PayPal to account.
There should be a anti-trust investigation into Paypal and there practices. Then Paypal should be sued into oblivion.
I have a Paypal account, but most of the time it is a one big zero on it.
... all the accounts for which they have not yet received the money from PayPal. Then let each of those people sort it out with PayPal. As long as they have another means to accept payment, then people who choose an unreliable company like PayPal for payment are the ones at risk.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
> I've done several chargebacks on paypal purchases.
Mod parent +1. I didn't realise you could still do this. Thanks for sharing that info.
you find yourself in a randomly-generated 3D world. It's daytime. At night, monsters will pop out of the darkness and attack you. Your only hope of survival is to harvest resources from the world (wood, stone, etc.) and build a shelter and weapons to defend yourself.
So it's basically a Pitch Black video game?
Da Blog
Since they don't charge for receiving it sounds perfect for a business and since the sender doesn't need to know what kind of account it is going to end up in, or the account #, it also sounds like you could just use a personal account to receive the money and then forward it (by whatever means) to your business account.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
One note - NEVER use a privacy service for a domain registration - one of these days, we're going to have a web blocking service that will filter out web sites that aren't up front about who runs them, so best to be ready now. Besides, if someone wants to drop in and give you money, why make it hard for them? Legit mail-order operations almost always list their physical address because those walk-in orders make a nice source of extra revenue for things like pizza for workers who have to do overtime.
He should hire a lawyer and have him send them a threatening letter. Do it now.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
you have succeeded in coming up with bad PR in a place like slashdot where developers, webmasters, even community pioneers gather up. it will do great for your business, and while trying to withhold 600 k euros, you are going to lose millions of $ of business.
morons.
Read radical news here
The link is right there at the bottom of the page when I login to my account on discovercard.com. "Secure Online Numbers" or something like that.
However, be aware that these numbers are NOT one-time use. They are restricted to one merchant only - whoever is the first to use the number. So you buy something at Amazon, and some Amazon employee swipes your credit card from the database but can't buy a bunch of crap from Wal-Mart using the number. But that number works an unlimited number of times at Amazon.
So using this number for PayPal does not mean that PayPal can't randomly decide to charge it later on. They can. It only means that nobody else besides PayPal can charge to it.
There are alternatives.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Everything you need to know about Paypal including how to get your account UNfrozen quickly. Notch they are ready to assist you - no charge. All they ask is that EVERYONE spread their website www.paypalfreeze.squarespace.com with as many people as possible via twitter-email-myspace,word-of-mouth etc EXCELLENT info that includes videos documents - lawsuits - names and a LOT more - an amazing NEW site that took a lot of work to bring together. Go visit if you have a Paypal account you have to go there! Notch there are volunteers answering emails 24 hours a day - contact them ASAP! Although Paypal is a name known around the world and boasts over 125 millions accounts less known are their unscrupulous policies and deceptive tactics that would make even the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge look like amateurish rookies. Billions of dollars held for nefarious reasons for long periods of time typically 180 days! Funds are held for a host of ridiculous reasons and computer screens which do not allow the user the ability to even correct the supposed issues that their funds are frozen to begin with-videos document this. Also documented in a customer phone recording is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to even CLOSE a Paypal account once opened. The site reveals Paypals until now little known ability to remove funds from checking accounts linked to Paypal accounts even after the Paypal account has been closed. Businesses have been shuttered across the USA as what is known as "rolling reserves" strangle businesses to the point of bankruptcy. Who are the real powerhouse players behind the scenes that allow this to growing pandemic? Powerful connections that extend to AG offices across the US and even to the Oval office. Former eBay CEO for one does not want this powerful new website to be viewed by anyone thinking of voting for her. Exposed is the real eBay and the way it's corporate leaders behave including the behavior that lead to the ongoing lawsuit filed by Craiglist against eBay. An amazing source of information about two of America's most well-know companies. The blog launched only a couple of weeks ago and is already being read by viewers in more than 60 countries! A video is scheduled to be released based upon the information in the middle of October. Next month a media blitz titled STOP GLOBAL FREEZING willl launch in New York City and other metro areas to distribute STOP GLOBAL FREEZING bumper stickers and other promo materials. The effort is a well-organized global information campaign put together by victims who were unable to get attention or justice going through the normaal venues that are most often perceived to be therr to support consumers. Example of one such case is Tammy Scott of California who lost over $6000.00, her business, and even her marriage due to the stress caused by Paypal's abusive tactics. She went so far as to expose the deceitful tactics Paypal uses to defraud consumers by telling the merchant credit card processor to accept chargeback claims despite the customers objections!!! Must see material for any person who uses Paypal or sells on eBay. Despite its claims that Paypal insist it is cannot be REGULATED as a bank in the US that is the exact opposite in Europe where it fought tooth and nail insisting it IS a bank for the express reasoin to beat competitor GOOGLE to that huge lucrative market. This is better info and reading than any spy novel that will shock and surprise the average citizen about the way a well-known US corporation is operating right under their nose!
Unlike a bank (where you have to show proof of ID when you join up) PayPal does not have verified identity information for most of its customers (there are ways to verify and send in photocopies of ID documents etc but its a pain in the ass and usually only done when PayPal says "do it or you wont get your money".
Now, there are laws in the US and elsewhere that force banks to look for suspicious transactions and report them. These laws are designed to detect money laundering and related crimes.
Banks do this by having flags to detect the suspicious transactions (exactly what constitutes a "suspicious transaction" varies from country to country and possibly bank to bank) and then reporting the transaction to the relavent authority using the ID details provided to the bank when the customer signed up for the account.
Because PayPal has no verified identity record for the customer (in the usual case), they cant simply report the "suspicious activity". So they freeze the account until they can verify that it was legit and/or verify the identity of the account holder (so they then have ID details to give to the relavent authorities if required by law)
Why PayPal considers "receiving a small amount of money from a large number of different accounts in a short space of time" as suspicious (and this isn't the first time I have heard of such activity being considered suspicious) and whether any laws in the US, Sweden or elsewhere list such activity as a "suspicious transaction" I dont know but it clearly happens.
I used a webhost some time ago and they used paypal for invoicing. Somehow after a while of manually sending payment every quarter via paypal, I was setup with a subscription and being debited the payments. The host went belly up and after moving hosts, I was debited again. I called paypal and explained the situation. They returned the funds to me. Nearly a year later, I was debited by the bankrupt host for two quarters of service. I called paypal and they told me to contact the merchant. The hosts phones were disconnected and my emails to them bounced. Paypal still refused to help but told me to contact the police. I instead disputed the matter with my bank who ruled in my favor. This left a negative balance in my paypal account. I expected paypal to debit me again, but they surprisingly removed the charge and zeroed the balance. I closed the account. They were only motivated to do the right thing after they were faced with picking up the tab. I have one now but use a debit card linked to an account I only put money in to spend.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Get 2 Bank accounts.
1 is your paypal account.
When you get money into, you move it into the other account.
When you need to pay something, you move money into the paypal account.
What happens if paypal decides to shut your account down? It doesn't get your money.
Really, I mean, wtf?
Sure, it might be more work, but then, shit like this won't happen.
Of course if they put a hold on your account and funds still go into it (which makes me wonder, how is that a hold on your account? you can't do much about that, but then, on hindsight, that seems weird, if not illegal.
But the part that gets me is the "if we detect funny business, we'll keep the money" If they are letting money go into the account, and not letting money out, then this here seems suspious enough to be investigated.
Be seeing you...
Hard to have sympathy for people who are incapable of the simple act of Googling "X sucks" when contemplating doing business with X.
Hey all. Arnas here.
I think what we should do is spam Paypal with emails. Make them suffer for what they've done. I think a massive strike of 126000 people on one email would mean something for them.
Hmm... Or maybe thats not enough... 3 emails every hour from every player saying "Unblock Markus Persson's account. Now." would definately give them the message.
I continue to use PayPal even though I am well aware of these fringe horror stories. Sucks to be this guy of course, but seems like paranoia from the average user's perspective.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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They also seem to scam a bit on the conversion fees/rates.
For example, as a Canadian buying from a non-CA seller (or sometimes even from one), the price is listed in USD. On the eBay.ca site, it also lists that price converted to CAD.
However, the CAD price is *ALWAYS* higher when you go to paypal and it does the actual conversion.
I wonder what it costs to sell a game with steamworks. It says there are no licensing/bandwidth/etc fees, but I'm assuming there's *some* charges involved. However, steam would likely result in added sales, and get past the nastiness of dealing with paypal.
A town in eastern Massachusetts, south of Boston; pop. 32,836