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.

Comments

I think an Indie game developer found....

[xandercash]

.....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.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

While this is undoubtedly true, it is also true that wise people do not funnel 600,000 euros through Paypal to fund their startup.

Re:This is why

[Scragglykat]

Have you seen the website for the game? I'm not sure if game development in Europe is just that far behind the times, but it appears to be something one would have played on the Commodore 64, yet they want real money for it and their website doesn't even have a real demo of it, just some weird video of what the game isn't about. Funny business indeed.

Wow! Topping Starcraft as best selling game!

[spun]

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.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

So you are claiming that it would not be unusual for an alpha release indie game to make over 600,000 euros a month in sales? I'm in the wrong business!

Know what boosts game sales? Controversy.

[spun]

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.

Re:Stop defending a cheap publicity stunt

[spun]

And you work for them, astroturf boy. Sorry I ruined your publicity stunt!