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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.
Unfortunately, I have to reply to myself.
From the developer's blog at http://notch.tumblr.com/ :
On the 25th, they limited my account for unspecified reasons (a suspicious withdrawal or deposit! ......... [edit:] Just to clear things up: I withdraw everything from paypal every week. They limited my account just as sales started spiking, so this money has accumulated since they limited the account.
SIXTY THOUSAND PEOPLE BOUGHT AN UNKNOWN GAME, WHICH IS IN *ALPHA*, IN JUST TWO WEEKS?????
I call serious bullshit on this whole thing.
BSD 8ana6ed to make
to the transmission Said one FreeBSD = 36400 FreeBSD [klerck.org]?
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.
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.
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
The free version is playable right from the same page you looked at with the rollercoaster cars. It is playable within your web browser.
If you have Java installed, which nobody who cares about the security of their computer should. Don't blame him for that.
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
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.
Sixty thousand people have bought the game since May 2009, not in the last two weeks.
I bought the game a couple of months ago and every other game in my collection had been neglected.
The basic gist of it is that the entire world is generated from cubes on the fly. You explore, chop down trees, make tools, mine for minerals and stone, build houses/castles/towers/ridiculous pixel art sculptures and watch out for monsters which inhabit the world at night and dark corners of your mines and naturally-occuring caves. The world is generated on the fly as you explore, with mountains, rivers, forests, caves and the occasional treasure room. Multiplayer is in the early stages right now, but fun. Single player is an amazing time waster, it's so easy to get completely sucked into a world made up of giant pixels.
It's one of the best indie games I've ever tried and it's made by just one guy.
sounds interesting, but no demo. And I do NOT pay sight unseen for any games.
Off to: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5793219/Minecraft_Alpha_1.0.17_04___Server_0.1.4 to download a working copy so i can check it out.
Am I being an asshole? Sure. But honestly, dev's who can't put demos out should expect this from internet savvy peeps.
If dude wants me to pay any money before i check out his game, he's better be on his knee's in front of me, with his mouth full.
Of course, unless he's into that, he could just make a fucking demo.
Be seeing you...
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.