Slashdot Mirror
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.
If paypal decides that there has been some "funny buisness" involved shouldnt they return the money to the origional accounts.
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
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.
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
....how the hell the guy made €600,000 from Minecraft?
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
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.
Absolutely true. I run a conference where we allow registrations by credit card (actually, we strongly encourage registration by CC, because all other forms of payment except cash are a massive pain). We looked long and hard at different options and while PayPal's merchant processing was one possibility, we went with a standard merchant account through FirstData / Citibank. Never been happier. Excellent service. Clear-as-a-bell charges, although somewhat intricate, and good code support for those who either want to roll their own payment, or integrate with standard shopping carts. The cost was less than PayPal, and the terms better. And that was for our event that processes under USD 50,000 per year.
Why, at the commercial level, anyone would use PayPal, even their so-called professional level service, is beyond me.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Same situation here - running a conference, needed to allow registrations by credit card. Our primary method of payment is Google Checkout. Main difference: A large percentage of our attendees insisted we support PayPal - so we have a PayPal account that we keep at a zero-dollar balance. When people send us money via PayPal, we immediately transfer it out of that account and to our bank. All of our actual money is held at our real, stable, brick-and-mortar bank.
For fear of precisely this reason. If I had enough support in our fanbase, I'd drop PayPal like a dead cat.
I personally know 20+ people that have bought it in the last week. Now, I know I'm not a significant data point -- but neither are you, and the fact that you haven't heard of it has no bearing on its popularity. If you had heard of it, you'd know that it's not "in alpha," but rather "Alpha" is the name of the new version of the game, which has been around for over a year in other forms.
Fortunately, we have objective measurements that support me more than you: http://www.google.com/trends?q=minecraft&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2010&sort=0
For the better part of 5 years now, SomethingAwful has been about as funny as the holocaust and thus anyone with any taste in humor would do well to avoid it.
You should still be careful with that; once you withdraw it, immediately transfer it from your paypal-linked bank to a different bank since PayPal has that bank information and could easily reverse a charge.
THIS. THIS. THIS. I own a fairly decent sized hosting business (several million dollars a year in revenue). We take Paypal as a payment option, but despise them. We have a seperate business checking account solely tied to our Paypal account, and we sweep our paypal balance into our checking account every 1-2 days (and have our bank set to move any money in the paypal checking account to our operating account not tied to paypal). Never. trust. Paypal.
Seriously, do they doubt the veracity of the horror tales?!
Blar.
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.
Exactly, how can they "lock" an account and still allow incoming deposits? It is ridiculously stupid behavior at best.
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.
It sounds exactly like Spore was supposed to be.... a really huge sandbox with tons of possibilities.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
No, it's ridiculously lucrative behaviour.
why can't he delete the link from his website? That would kill new payments from all but the most determined of people.
FGD 135