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PayPal Withholding Indie Game Dev's €600,000 Account

Posted by Soulskill on from the money-for-nothin' dept.

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.

6 of 775 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thank you Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    I use paypal for all my transactions because I rather not have X Place see any of my information and not to long ago i had a discrepancy on my account where someone haxed it and removed money, turned it into euros, and then transfered out my money, but quickly resolved the problem in a week and refunded my money which was 2 years ago, so far I haven't had any problems in the last 4 years other then that case. Though I would say I probably had equally the same number of problems with my real accounts.

  2. Re:Sigh by Patch86 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Really? Who are Western Union? I've heard of Google, and heard of Amazon (both run PayPal-like services), but Western Union are unknown to me.

    I mean I'll go Wikipedia them now, but I'm interested into what would give them such a fantastic edge over these other internet giants.

  3. Re:competition? by sexconker · · Score: 0, Troll

    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

    TRUE TRUE TRUE!
    They're actually doing it.
    Please see ebay.com

  4. Oooh! Conspiracy theory! Follow the money. by spun · · Score: 0, Troll

    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
  5. Re:When is a bank not a bank by theaveng · · Score: 0, Troll

    merchants should be seizing cards that say "Check ID" on the signature strip

    Why??? I have DEMAND PHOTO ID written below my signature, so the clerk will ask to see my photo. Why should my card be seized jackass? It's MY card. I have the right to control who uses it (me only).

    --
    FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
  6. Re:same thing happened to me... by Kristopeit,+M.+D. · · Score: 0, Troll
    very many. i am opinionated, and the world is full of idiots who believe they would benefit to silence me.

    the slashdot admins are unable to make a functional, scalable infrastructure as they attempt to "not allow a single moderator a 'reign of terror.'", but they do nothing from stopping a single PERSON from BEING MANY "single moderators."

    in short, slashdot = stagnated, run by idiots, and you are also an idiot, too concerned with the irrelevant activity of others.

    you are NOTHING.