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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.
They blocked my account for reasons that were not clear to me, but had to do with being an American living in Germany using a German bank. There was a way to get it unblocked, but it was complicated and not worth my time. I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay.
They are just stupid.
To be fair, if you generally have problems with anything Google, you'll be lucky to ever make contact with a human to fix it.
THL phish sticks
I worked for Western Union for over 6 years, they are subject to many, many banking regulations. Since PayPal is a money transfer service, it should fall under the same regulations.
It's too bad WU management is deathly afraid of the Internet (well, technology in general), otherwise they could have prevented PayPal from ever existing.
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.
I'm on my 10th-ish PayPal account. I NEVER accept money through it. I send a GoogleCheckout invoice. Even for eBay.
But on Car forums, certain websites, etc, it seems all they accept is PayPal. So I'll use it with a temporary credit card until they figure out I'm the same person as my other locked accounts and lock another one.
It all started when I sold something on eBay. Turns out it was with a stolen credit card. So they reversed the payment leaving me with a -$600 balance. Which they said was my fault somehow. Then the second account I sold a laptop and has $400 sitting in it 'locked up' until I pay them the $600 in the first account.
I'm not a violent man, but I could honestly go vigilante on some middle managers at PayPal with a crow bar.
paypal is evil... don't do business with them.
FALSE FALSE FALSE! That would be collusion and illegal. They have been beaten down about this in the past, in other jurisdictions. Please see :
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/06/australia-calls-shenanigans-on-ebay-paypal-only-policy.ars
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/02/26/ebay-paypal-tie-up-draws-complaints-in-germany
Yes. In Canada you can do an Interac email money transfer from most banks for about $1. If the receiver is with one of the major banks they can have the money in their account within minutes of receiving the email from the sender and if they are with one of the institutions not participating in the scheme then they can use a middleman-service and still get the money within IIRC 3 days. There is also HyperWallet which seems favoured by the credit unions and a few of the banks and they provide a similar service... in fact the fastest way to get money into your PayPal account from a Canadian bank is to use HyperWallet.
I used to use Western Union wire transfers but they have become insanely expensive IMHO.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
It's EUR10 each, so that's only 60k pre-orders. I wrote a WoW addon that's used by a couple thousand people, and Minecraft is arguably 30x cooler than my addon. The internet is a big place; 60k people is pretty reasonable.
That's because they don't exist. Even if the statistics back you up (and I'll bet every penny I've ever spent via Paypal they don't) we hear about the illegitimate business practices and not the few successes.
Last time I tried to use Paypal they took money off my credit card, then refused to route it through to the recipient. As they were acting as a merchant acquirer in the transaction, and I don't have a Paypal account, by holding onto those funds they were effectively stealing money from me.
So I threatened them with court action, asked my card company to reverse the transaction, and complained to the FSA and to Mastercard.
I got my money back eventually, and now refuse to do business with anybody that only accepts payment via Paypal. It's inconvenient at times, but not as inconvenient as giving money to a corrupt business and still not receiving the services/goods I've paid for.
Banks routinely monitor accounts for "suspicious activity" and suspend those accounts until they can confirm what's going on. I've had credit cards locked because a fraudster started charging a series of gas station transactions in a city several hundred kilometres from where I live. I got in touch with the bank, straightened the mess out (in this case by having a new card issued), and was on my way. I've has credit cards locked because I myself made a series of unexpected and large transactions overseas. I got in touch with the bank, straightened the mess out (by asking them to please unlock my card), and was on my way.
This is all done via automated algorithms that scan for patterns of activity that don't match the norm - however it is they choose to define the norm.
The difference here is that PayPal is holding on to actual cash (rather than suspending a credit card account), and that PayPal is notoriously opaque and difficult to deal with (while my banks were easy to reach and easy to talk to).
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Why someone would trust PayPal, who isn't a bank, with well over half a million dollars is beyond me.
I don't think they did, the summary makes it sound like they kept the balance low but have been locked out of their account for whatever reason and since they were locked out 600,000 Euros (actually more than 3/4 of a million dollars!) has come into the account. They've had no way to remove it, no way to prevent the money coming in short of shutting down their operation, and no way outside of PayPal's customer service to resolve the situation. Honestly, it's almost criminal (or maybe even is criminal, I don't know).
I stopped selling on ebay (ebay owns Paypal) over a year ago and don't touch PayPal anymore because of their lack of honesty.
PayPal must be considered a bank because that's exactly what it does, and follow regulation.
If you want to see more complaints check this: http://www.my3cents.com/companyOverview.cgi?code=668
Why? Because it's the credit card company's fault for making an insecure system. They should be held liable, and maybe that would encourage them to develop more secure systems that can't be swiped so easily. Example: A few years ago I had the digits stolen off my Discover card, probably by the man at the hotel where I stayed. Either he or someone else racked-up $3500 using a fake card at Walmart. Obviously it's not my fault, but neither is it Walmart's fault.
I guess you think Walmart should be the one to suffer the 3500 dollar loss, but I completely disagree.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall