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

When is a bank not a bank

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[mark99]

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.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[TamCaP]

PayPal power results from 2 factors. Terrible bank bank transfer opportunities for individuals domestically, and even more expensive ones internationally. In many European countries nobody uses Paypal for transactions. It's either direct bank transfer (many banks offer no-fee transfers to other banks), bank-based payment system or credit cards. Yet in the US (a HUGE consumer market) those options are limited to credit cards, and check / ACH system and PayPal fills that niche just perfectly. It's changing, i.e. SunTrust recently introduced cheap on-line wire-transfers for only $3 / transfer - a big upgrade, as it used to be $25. Yet for some reason, the interbanking system in the US is still far behind what Europe has to offer (except for credit cards - there are definitely more developed here!)

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[amorsen]

Turns out it was with a stolen credit card. So they reversed the payment leaving me with a -$600 balance.

I'm not saying that it's right, but the real banks do exactly the same thing. As a merchant, all the risk is yours. The agreements you have to sign with banks (or other credit card transaction handlers) are truly horrendous, but you can't take your business elsewhere, because they're all pretty much the same.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[WillDraven]

But at least he is clearly de-authorizing them from using said card and if they do he can contest the charges and/or sue them for credit card fraud.

It is debatable whether this will do any good in the end but at least it makes it a bit more difficult for them to claim they had his permission.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[0100010001010011]

Just use temporary credit card numbers.

Citi Cards has one, so does Discover.

1 time use numbers. Discovers expire the same month as your normal card.

Citi Card's expire the next calendar month and you can even set a limit. I couldn't imagine using anything else.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[AnonymousClown]

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.

That was their problem. PayPal was the one taking the credit card and acting as the (very well compensated) intermediary between buyer and seller. PayPal does the actual processing and therefore from the credit card's company's point of view, is the merchant.

If PayPal is going to charge all those fees for processing (talk about nickle and diming!), I would argue that they should take the risk of fraud. Otherwise, there really is no point in using them, is there.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Have Brain Will Rent]

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.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[geekoid]

The Vogons go into a rage of poetry writing when thinking about Paypal Bureaucracy.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[oldspewey]

I only ever used it for eBay, so I just stopped using eBay.

Ditto.

I haven't visited PayPal or eBay in at least a half a decade. My world didn't implode.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[dziban303]

Give me your credit card number, expiration date, CVV code and billing zip code and I'll check to see if it's still in our system. Thanks for using PayPal©!

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[noidentity]

And yet people who know of their behavior still give them money to store. Why?

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[commodore64_love]

If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller. PLUS paypal is supposed to provide seller protection if the item was shipped to a verified address.

If it were me I'd track down the buyer and demand back whatever product he stole. You have the address.

ALSO: Those comments that say Paypal is not regulated are flat wrong. There are numerous regulations/laws that cover Paypal, and it was their violations of those laws that got them into trouble with multiple American States several years ago. The judge in the case nullified huge sections of Paypal's EULA as being contrary to these laws. ("Consumers cannot sign-away their rights already protected by state and/or federal law.")
.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[fedos]

I think it has more to do with the fact that the banks enjoy charging large fees for things that cost them less.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Anonymous Coward]

If PayPal stole close to $1,000,000.00 US from me and I couldn't get it back through legal methods, I'd burn their fucking building to the ground with them in it. That's more money than a lot of people see in their entire lifetime.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[node 3]

ALSO: Those comments that say Paypal is not regulated are flat wrong. ALSO: Those comments that say Paypal is not regulated are flat wrong.

*NOBODY* is saying that PayPal is not subject to laws. What they are saying is they aren't regulated like a bank, where you can have some reasonable level of confidence that your money is safe.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Surt]

Hah. I suggested paypal had serious problems in another thread and got jumped on by some paypal engineer. Bet he's enjoying this thread!

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[TheTurtlesMoves]

One is born every minute. Just look at the above comments... "they took my money but I still use them"... etc. I don't anymore and never will again. Ever. Period.

If paypal is the only payment option, then you have no payment options as far as I am concerned. There are a few OSS projects where i will donate too as soon as there is a paypal free way to do it.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Surt]

Probably because in many cases they can't find a better solution.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[0100010001010011]

https://deskshop.discovercard.com/thincard/thinclient.html

You might not have a Discover Discover card, but a Discover card issued by another bank.

I wrote a javascript bookmark so I don't have to sign it just to open another window.

https://www.accountonline.com/Athena/PageServlet/thinclient.prod.xsl?loginlib=loginlib&issuerid=1&brand=Citi is Citi Mastercard's.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Mycroft_VIII]

You should always use the correct spelling and abbreviations with any online commerce.
Spelling out lane or drive or court , etc. can make it difficult if not impossible to accurately locate you.
      If something is being delivered to you and the address is not correct, or the phone number is NOT answered (or long distance) you might not get what you ordered.
      Also your apartment number/letter (or suite or such) is NOT part of the street name. If there is a box for 'unit' or apartment use only it for that.
      A computer is trying to match up your address most of the time and if it can't a human may try to call you to find out where you are.
      Where I work if you don't put in an address the computer can locate we usually call, if no one answers we cancel the order rather than waste time and risk the chance it's a set-up to rob the driver or a prank. All the majors do this in food delivery and most of the small ones.
    If you don't know the correct abbreviation for the suffix then look it up since you are already online.

Mycroft

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[cawpin]

Yes, they can lock it but not indefinitely and without explanation. That is theft. A TOS doesn't override the law.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[LordArgon]

Go to a bank and ask about your options. After I got out of school and went to get my first credit card, I couldn't get one because I had no credit history and was no longer in the "terrible credit risk" demographic (see the documentary "Maxed Out," btw). Anyway, the bank had a "secured" card in which I prepaid (set my own credit limit with cash) and used it for a year. At the end of the year of responsible use, they gave me my money back and let me keep the credit limit. Now I have a credit history and have since obtained several more credit cards (which I max out and never pay! hahahah.... but not really)

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[c6gunner]

Ah, yes, its those horrible Fat Cats and their Reptilian Overlords. Down with Capitalism! Free love and free weed are a human right!

I mean, it couldn't be just a case of there being very little demand for wire transfers due to the pervasiveness of credit cards, resulting in higher fees on a per-transfer basis. No, that's FAR too unlikely.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[StikyPad]

I take it a step further and just use borrowed cards.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[AmigaMMC]

Theirs is a common tactic, they'll block accounts with lots of money so meanwhile they can earn interest. In California there was a class action on this, but because they settled out of court the lawyers got most of the settlement money, not the people, and they can keep doing it because this involves only California. They tried in Australia but the courts shot them down because, unlike in the U.S., in the rest of the developed world governments protect their people.

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

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[hey!]

If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller.

Why?

Being pretty far to the left politically, I'm just about the least likely person I know to have sympathy for a bank, but I just don't see why the bank is responsible here.

The law in the US limits the liability of the cardholder, who may well be the one most at fault. So it is the merchant who bears the cost. When the fraudster uses a stolen credit card, he is stealing from the merchant, not the cardholder. What the GP is asking is for somebody else to compensate him for having been robbed of $600. I can understand that. A lot of "merchants" these days are consumers who occasionally sell as well as buy stuff off of eBay. It's natural for people who think of themselves as consumers rather than merchants to have a consumer's attitude toward fraud: if I'm honest, then fraud should be somebody else's problem.

The closest I can come out to this being the bank's fault is that (a) they encourage consumers and merchants to use their services with the assurance that the system is safe and (b) the credit cart companies have opposed laws that would reduce fraud but make using credit cards less convenient. These are rather thin justifications.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[commodore64_love]

The best part about credit cards is the 3% (or sometimes even 5%) rebate they give me on food, gasoline, hotels. Oh and books. My amazon card gives me 3% off books.

That adds-up to around $500 rebate each year. Sometimes more if my employer sends me on lots of business travel.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[commodore64_love]

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.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[node 3]

Um, no. Americans would be all over that shit.

And only in America is saying, "hey, a little bit of socialism ain't so bad" is equated with "DOWN WITH CAPITALISM FASCIST ILLUMINATI!" Things don't have to be so black and white. I promise you, in "socialist" Europe, capitalism is doing just fine. That's also why I put socialism in quotes in my initial post.

As for your reasoning, no. The very fact that PayPal even exists shows that there is demand for something like this. As does online bill pay (which actually sends paper checks if the recipient isn't part of the bill pay system). And don't for a moment think that there's no demand for the ability to send, electronically, cheaply and quickly, money between individuals.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[kwiqsilver]

No information is ever deleted from PayPal.

There's a credit card table that lists every credit card ever entered into the system, there's an address table that lists every mailing and billing address ever entered, there's a series of tables that list the information for every transaction ever attempted, etc.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[sdnoob]

Just use temporary credit card numbers.

*that* is exactly what we use our paypal account for (and pretty much the only thing).

unfortunately, paypal has decided to discontinue the popular and convenient virtual mastercard debit numbers (aka the 'paypal plugin') starting september 22.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Achromatic1978]

Jackass? Settle down, poppet.

That being said, you are wrong on so many levels:

It's MY card.

Nice try, but no, it's not. You may wish to actually bother to read the agreement you signed when you opened that account. Universally, you will find a clause that says "At all times, any cards issued attached to account remain the property of [issuing institution] and must be returned upon demand."

I have the right to control who uses it (me only).

If anything, you mean the responsibility. I don't think you'll find many rights to using a card. You could authorize additional users, but when you let someone else use your card, you'd be forfeiting any and all protections against liability stemming from the use of said card.

I have DEMAND PHOTO ID written below my signature, so the clerk will ask to see my photo.

Again, it's a basic tenet of human maturity and responsibility that we read and comprehend the contracts we enter into. However, evidently, many of us choose not to, and wax indignant and polemic, ignorant of our ignorance. In your cardholder contract, the one you signed, if not also on the card itself, you'll find a clause, "This card is valid ONLY UPON the signature of the cardholder.". In many cases, this emphasis is explicit. Many contracts / institutions will also state that you are not to write CHECK ID on the card.

That same contract will also state that your issuing institution, and the merchants in its network reserve the right to seize and retain possession of your card, and that the merchant may destroy the card on instruction from the institution. Remember, it's not your property?

Now, why, may you ask, would they accept a signature on the back of your card, and not "CHECK ID"? Several reasons: 1) what makes you think your average merchant is trained in recognizing counterfeit ID or verifying identity from facial features? (Not that they are expected to be graphologists either, but that's another matter). 2) Some people like to believe that having such a request on their card raises the bar of liability and / or protection for them from fraudulent claims - "Did they check my ID?" - when in fact it does no such thing, after all your issuing institution made no such agreement with you, and in fact you went outside the bounds of your agreement to impart an obligation on your relationship between you and your merchant that has no bearing, weight or merit.

Don't even bother referring to card-not-present transactions. The merchant pays a higher fee on such transactions, precisely because of the increased risk.

Don't get your panties all twisted up because someone on the Internet has the unmitigated gall to suggest you actually read the contracts you enter into before mouthing off petulantly.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[FritzTheCat1030]

but because they settled out of court the lawyers got most of the settlement money, not the people

Horseshit. The lawyers took the same percentage from the settlement as they would have had they gone to court and won. And that percentage was not a secret amount undisclosed to the people who willingly made themselves a part of the class action. They were perfectly free to go after Paypal on their own if they didn't like the terms.

Re:When is a bank not a bank

[Kalriath]

Ah yes, Enderandrew. I said I had problems with Paypal refusing to offer dispute resolution on one of my sales (via a third party) and he insisted that Paypal is flawless, and it was my processor's fault. Also insisted that any problems can easily be sorted by calling Paypal's "giant customer service centre".

Suck it, Enderandrew.

This is why...

[MrEricSir]

...it's best to avoid PayPal. Shady business practices, horrible support, and it's regulated even less than an American bank.

competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:competition?

[VGPowerlord]

As I recall, Google has tried.

However, eBay has made it so all payments there are required to go through PayPal. Which would seem to me to be a major misuse of monopoly powers...

Re:competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:competition?

[Dialecticus]

Why no other more reputable service has challenged them in the e-payment space is beyond me.

Both Amazon Payments and Google Checkout are competing with PayPal, but PayPal has a considerable lead to overcome.

Re:competition?

[MikeBabcock]

In Canada we have Interac. Many don't realize it, but every bank card in the country can be used to do online person-to-person money transfers without using Paypal.

Re:competition?

[Skal Tura]

Moneybookers, ePassporte, AlertPay are probably the biggest. Then there is the niche eGold and the like.

But nothing garners consumers & buyers for business like Paypal! Over 98% of our proceeds come via paypal for example.

Return the money

[He who knows]

If paypal decides that there has been some "funny buisness" involved shouldnt they return the money to the origional accounts.

Re:Return the money

[hypergreatthing]

Obviously they'll decide that the funny business is indeed happening. From Paypal's side. And they'll keep the money.

This is why

[geekoid]

companies that handle payment transaction needs regulation. At the very least, the people who sent money via paypal would be reimbursement.

Re:This is why

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Because the game is lots of fun to play with friends and because this 'alpha' is more stable than some games that are sold in stores?

Re:This is why

[atfrase]

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.

Re:This is why

[TheLink]

Well Starcraft 2 certainly seems to be doing better. And yes it can be pirated.

Just googling seems to show there was quite some bad feeling about MW2 in the PC gamer community:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/pc-modern-warfare-2-its-much-worse-than-you-thought.ars
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4069/mw2b.jpg

FWIW I've played none of the mentioned games.

Thank you Slashdot

[locallyunscene]

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.

Re:Thank you Slashdot

[lwsimon]

I don't think they exist - seriously.

Ask *anyone* who sells frequently on eBay, and you'll hear a story about how they've been screwed by PayPal. It is a cost of doing business, like paying protection money to the mob. If you complain about it too loudly, they lock your account and take it all.

Re:Thank you Slashdot

[Cederic]

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.

Paypal are notorious for this

[mewsenews]

Almost exactly five years ago, Paypal froze $30k in Hurricane Katrina charity money raised by SomethingAwful, the story is here. They're still crooks now.

Re:Paypal are notorious for this

[zero_out]

I wonder why my employer's WebSense filter blocked it as being "tasteless." Any ideas?

Re:Paypal are notorious for this

[jgagnon]

The day I have to taste anything that comes up on my monitor is the day I stop using computers.

Re:Paypal are notorious for this

[Lord_Alex]

I wonder why my employer's WebSense filter blocked it as being "tasteless." Any ideas?

I'm a WebSense admin. Classification of content seems to be random at best. I'm constantly unblocking and reclassifying content. You have no idea how often sites like Google get classed as porn, malicious, social networking, tasteless and so on. WS just rolls a D100 every time it crawls a site. Frustrating as hell. I have so many stories :(

Paypall thanks you for the interest free loan

[spun]

The CEOs were bouncing around in their piles of money so exuberantly that one got sick in his. The amount of money in your account fits our CEO frolicking needs perfectly. Thank you for the interest free loan, and don't ask about the funny smell on your money when you do receive it.

Two Words

[killmenow]

Google Checkout

Re:Two Words

[gandhi_2]

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.

Re:Two Words

[gaspyy]

A few more words about Google Checkout: works only in US.

I am using Paypal to sell a game. The demographics are USA 39%, UK 11%, Italy 8% and so on. Overall the 20-80 rule is observed.
By using Google Checkout instead of PayPal, I would have prevented 61% of my sales - you know, long tail and all. It's true that only 0.05% of the sales are from e.g. Maldives, but all these sales add up.

If Google Checkout gets global, I'll be the first to jump. Until then, Paypal is a simple method trusted by the buyers. I just make sure I don't keep my money there.

Re:Two Words

[future assassin]

IF you are in the UK and US but forget Canada. I tried signing a few months back and there nowhere did it say as a Canadian I couldn't use checkout until I filled out my info, including my cell number and after submission I got a nice notice of I can't use it because I'm in Canada. So these fucks just got my personal business info and then one they got it they tell me I can't use the service.

Re:Two Words

[Cederic]

and yet, the one time I had an issue with an online merchant I'd bought from via Google Checkout, filling in Google's "it went wrong" form led to an immediate response from Google, and a couple of days later a refund in full.

When the process works seamlessly without me needing direct contact with a person, I'm willing to forgo that contact.

Re:Two Words

[Yvan256]

The point is: you need to be in the USA or the UK to have a Google Checkout account in the first place.

Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

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.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[Bigjeff5]

So being successful is now funny business?

That's utter bullshit. And they should know by now that it is not funny business, it's a popular game developed by one or two people. It can happen you know.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

Straw man. I never said it was because he was successful, but picture this: a small indie game making a few hundred bucks a week suddenly gets a 600,000 euro deposit. What does that look like to you? Paypal has a legal duty to prevent money laundering.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[ktappe]

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.

It's none of their darned business to unilaterally claim something fishy is going on unless there is a complainant. It doesn't sound as if there is one in this case so they should keep their paws off until there is a cause to freeze the account.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[oldspewey]

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).

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

Exactly. What does preventing theft get Paypal? They have their cut already. This was because 600,000 euroes went into the account, not because 600,000 euroes went out of it. Where's the profit in freezing an account with nothing in it?

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[spun]

I was pretty clear that I was speculating. It just seems very odd for that much money to be coming from sales of an alpha release indie game.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[compro01]

Not when said game got featured on the TF2 developer's blog a couple months ago. It's been spreading like wildfire since then. 60k sales isn't that surprising.

Re:Maybe we have our answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but no game in the history of the world has made 600,000 euros in monthly sales. That translates to about 10 million dollars a year. Starcraft has made about 11 million in its twelve year publishing history.

That sounds convincing, until anyone realizes you're just wrong. Welcome to 2010, Starcraft 2 did $180 million it's first month:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=115420
Paris, FRANCE – Septebmer 1, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty has sold over 3 million copies worldwide in the first month of its release, building on the game’s momentum as the bestselling PC game of 2010 and the fastest-selling real-time strategy game of all time.

PayPal has done this forever

[rotide]

PayPal is infamous for this.

Years ago, when I pulled my account information from them it was "common" knowledge in the eBay scene that if you were a seller and a buyer claimed it was a fraudulent sale, PayPal would pull the refund directly from your PayPal account without notice. If the funds were not in your PayPal account, they would pull it from your linked checking account, again, without notice.

The common strategy was to setup a second "dummy" checking account and link PayPal to that one. Whenever you had money in your PayPal account above a certain amount, pull it into your "dummy" account and then transfer the full balance _out_ of that account into one that isn't linked to PayPal.

Why someone would trust PayPal, who isn't a bank, with well over half a million dollars is beyond me.

For some interesting stories, paypalsucks.com

Re:PayPal has done this forever

[lwsimon]

I do this, to this day, for my eBay store. *Everyone* I know who uses PayPal for business has been burned to one degree or another.

Re:PayPal has done this forever

[TooMuchToDo]

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.

Re:PayPal has done this forever

[MozeeToby]

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).

Re:PayPal has done this forever

[Nadaka]

Exactly, how can they "lock" an account and still allow incoming deposits? It is ridiculously stupid behavior at best.

Re:PayPal has done this forever

[hasdikarlsam]

No, it's ridiculously lucrative behaviour.

Has anyone asked....

[pastafazou]

....how the hell the guy made €600,000 from Minecraft?

Re:Has anyone asked....

[AndrewNeo]

Well, first you put something out there people want to play, then people like me pay 10EUR for it, and ...

Re:Has anyone asked....

[robmv]

probably he found a big gold vein while mining

Re:Has anyone asked....

[Beelzebud]

I know, right? I thought ALL PC gamers just pirated games!

Re:Has anyone asked....

[Angst Badger]

Or why, with 600,000 in revenue, he's even using PayPal at all instead of just getting a merchant account with a real bank? Hell, *I* did that with a project that ended up making a whopping $750.

Re:Has anyone asked....

[Silas is back]

Yes, this is about the 4th time I hear about such a thing on big news sites, guess this must happen very often.

Re:Has anyone asked....

[Hadlock]

Just google "credit card merchant account" and most terms for internet only merchant accounts is something like $15/mo + flat $0.30/ transaction + 2% of the gross amount. They all have 1-800 numbers with live, english speaking (native speakers, even).. it's pretty legitimate, and has been around for quite some time. Many of them have free plugins to use with your Drupal site, etc to use. It might have been rocket science in 2003 but it's just a set of credentials, a piece of code, and a bank account number now.

Re:Sigh

[Dracos]

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.

Explain it to me....

[Qubit]

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.

Re:Explain it to me....

[JumpDrive]

The only problem I can see is why would a bank go through this hassle.
Currently they can just hold onto your money and put it into the Federal Reserve and make money.
Why go through all the hassle of dealing with buyers and sellers.
It's much more lucrative to them if the sale goes through a credit account also.

At 600k, it's time to move up

[derrickh]

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.

 

What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[A Friendly Troll]

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.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

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.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[Lord Ender]

Actually, sixty thousand people have paid for it just since the account was frozen!

Minecraft is an entirely new category of game. There is no name for this new category. This is why indie development rocks; EA is happy to release new iterations of the FPS, but they would never gamble with a new class of game entirely.

The basic idea of Minecraft is this: you find yourself in a randomly-generated 3D world. It's daytime. At night, monsters will pop out of the darkness and attack you. Your only hope of survival is to harvest resources from the world (wood, stone, etc.) and build a shelter and weapons to defend yourself. The night/day cycle repeats: harvest, build, defend.

Think of it as something of a combo of Elder Scrolls and Second Life.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[rekenner]

Here, let me type 9 characters into YouTube for you.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Minecraft&page=&utm_source=opensearch
Bam! Watch. Be educated. Or shit, look at Wikipedia. It can explain it too. It's amazingly popular among other Internet forums (Something Awful, LueLinks, part of 4chan), as even though it's an alpha, it's been fully playable for months. So, you know. Multiplayer games that let you goof off and hang out with people make money. SHOCK.
I'm not sure if you're lazy, stupid, or a troll. But your post is calling the guy out on tricking people, when there's an easy to find product there. ... Though, looking at your name, I suppose I have the answer.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[Suzuran]

Valve blogged about it, which is what drove a big chunk of those sales.

The game is basically first-person Dwarf Fortress. Your job is mine riches out of the ground while not dying.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[Mr. DOS]

I bought it. I love it. I've been telling everyone who'll listen to me about it.

The reason the site contains so little information about the game is because there isn't much to tell – by and large, the game is the definition of a sandbox. For gameplay examples, you should look at some Let's Play videos; I recommend the ones done by mastatsan.

BTW, the reason it's sold so many copies is because 4chan's /v/ hooked onto it in a major way, and it's spreading quite quickly through Reddit. My point is, although the number of copies sold sounds huge for a game still in alpha, it's somehow clicked with a huge number of people. Also, whatever said this all happened in the last week isn't quite right: while sales have been rising steadily for the last while, the game's been purchasable for over a year now.

Re:What the hell *is* Minecraft?

[fprintf]

It sounds exactly like Spore was supposed to be.... a really huge sandbox with tons of possibilities.

Re:have not used paypal in 3 or 4 years

[pz]

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.

same thing happened to me...

[Kristopeit, M. D.]

back in 1997 i ran a similar internet video game... edrugtrader.com... it's still running, but i no longer accept payments to play. paypal froze my account and seized all of the money from the then 100,000+ users. the game is based on drug dealing, and they claimed i was breaking the law because drug dealing is illegal... however there was no actual drug dealing... it's just a market simulation game.

paypal is evil... don't do business with them.

Re:same thing happened to me...

[Kristopeit, M. D.]

not everyone had to pay... getting premium access in no way benefitted the players... it was more just stuff like uploading pictures and access to message boards. probably under 5% of people paid.

$65,000 is way less than my salary... so now i'm supposed to spend weeks or months, paying a lawyer over $100/hour the whole time, AND waste my own time only to be later raped by the next payment processor or some parents group suing me because their child read the word FUCK and gave me their credit card number without permission?

yeah, you're an idiot.

Re:Payments continued?

[bluefoxlucid]

Why hasn't he called them directly, told them to elevate as high as it can go, preferably (to their own advantage) to someone with a lawyer standing next to him; told the guy to turn on his speaker phone; and handed his phone to HIS lawyer?

Re:Sigh

[bsDaemon]

they may well be committing several laws

Congress commits several laws every year, but no one's stopped them yet...

Re:have not used paypal in 3 or 4 years

[lowrydr310]

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.

People still use pay-pal?

[FatSean]

Seriously, do they doubt the veracity of the horror tales?!

Re:People still use pay-pal?

[six11]

I was popping in to ask the same question... who uses paypal? I've found it completely unnecessary, hard to use, and has an unreasonably large potential for fraud/theft. Sometimes I buy something online and I have no choice but to intersect with some form of PayPal money laundering. Invariably I decide I don't need that thing so badly and buy elsewhere.

Re:People still use pay-pal?

[Trepidity]

Mostly because of either no choice or few alternatives.

For payment-only, you often have no choice, because it's what eBay and/or a particular merchant accepts. On the other hand, for payment-only it's also relatively unproblematic, because you shouldn't have large amounts of money sitting in the account that PayPal could freeze.

For accepting money, you're much more exposed to PayPal's whims, and you also have a choice of what payment processor you use. However, you don't often have many good choices. Two of its competitors are Google Checkout and Amazon's payment service, but they're much less international. PayPal supports dozens of currencies and merchants in >100 countries, while Google Checkout is limited to only merchants in the U.S. and U.K., and Amazon's payments services only allow withdrawal of funds to U.S. bank accounts (and only do transactions in U.S. dollars). Since the Minecraft developer is Swedish, neither of those are options.

Another alternative is to set up a merchant account for processing credit-card payments yourself, but you need to be a certain size for that to be a sensible option. The Minecraft guy probably is big enough now that a merchant account makes sense, but he wasn't when he started out as a random 1-man shop selling a $10 game on the internet.

Basically there is a big gap in the market for lightweight payment-acceptance services available to non-American merchants. If you're in Sweden, you have PayPal, a merchant account, accepting bank transfers directly, and mailed payments.

Re:People still use pay-pal?

[cduffy]

Another alternative is to set up a merchant account for processing credit-card payments yourself, but you need to be a certain size for that to be a sensible option. The Minecraft guy probably is big enough now that a merchant account makes sense, but he wasn't when he started out as a random 1-man shop selling a $10 game on the internet.

I'm going to use this as an opportunity to plug BrainTree -- my new employer uses them as our payment gateway, and they're a dream to work with: They provide well-written APIs for all common platforms, and when I have a problem I get an email back from a member of their dev team typically in about 30 minutes.

Their front page says "We [heart] developers", and AFAICT they mean it. Github is one of their marquee customers.

Taking credit cards doesn't need to be awful.

Re:People still use pay-pal?

[justin12345]

Not to mention PCI compliance. If you are handling your customer's credit card info you better have a lot of time and money on you hands to make sure that info is secure. Paypal, Google, Amazon, and a few others take care of all that for you. I recently had to implement a payment option to replace our merchant account. We wanted to go with Google, only to find out that everything we wanted was still in the "experimental" stage (not fully implemented, no customer support, minimal documentation), not even beta. In the end we had to go with Paypal. We've been using Paypal's basic services for 7 years without any real issues, and we found that implementing their more powerful payment services was relatively painless (so far).

The other thing is: Having had experience with other merchant account providers and payment gateways, it's not like they are any better. I've been involved in lawsuits where the merchant account people "just couldn't get their computer system to deposit the money" (they lost). You see Paypal in the news now and again, but I've seen the shit their competitors pull, and they're no better. That's why we have courts.

Re:Sigh

[nospam007]

"...As of July 2007, across Europe, PayPal also operates as a Luxembourg-based bank..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Re:600,000 in PayPal - Crazy Nuts

[Pluvius]

Sigh... Slashdot: News for Nerds Who Can't Read.

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.

Rob

Re:Sigh

[TheSpoom]

Western Union actually bought an internet bank account transfer company called Custom House recently, which is really good if you want to transfer money between bank accounts in different countries. So they're at least dipping their toes in "this newfangled interweb thing".

The problem with on-line donations

[Big Smirk]

If you buy through Paypal and receive the product via a download, there is no guarantee that the product got into the hands of the legal owner of the credit card.

So with stolen credit cards or Paypal accounts, some people must have been downloading the game (or however its registered). When the rightful owners found out, they had the charges reversed. Leaving Paypal to prove that the money wasn't indeed stolen.

Paypal offers protection only if you send to 'verified address'. If you send the product to some random address, then you are taking a risk. Likewise with activation codes.

If Bob.Smith@hotmail.com trys to buy something from you using a Paypal account assigned to Nancy.Smith@google.com, your an idiot if you send the activation code to Bob.Smith@hotmail.com. Activation code should only be sent to Nancy.Smith.

Bottom line, if he has 600,000 in the account, you can bet Paypal was just hit up by a credit card company to return some of that money. Paypal is just trying to figure out exactly what has to be returned. If its a lot of accounts, Paypal might freeze the account just to see how much money needs to be returned. Eventually, when whatever statute of limitations runs out, he will get the balance (Paypal of course gets the interest over those many months).

I've had 0 problems with Paypal. I only ship to verified addresses.

What else but PayPal?

[Yvan256]

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.

Re:Merchant accounts

[blair1q]

The meatspace way to do a merchant account,

There. I fixed that for you.

People online don't generally think of doing things the old way when the new way seems so easy.

We also don't read EULAs. So we don't read account agreements in general. Bank account agreements included. So it's unlikely we'll read the Paypal account agreement and see where it isn't in agreement with any bank account agreement we've ever not read. So our surprise upon finding out they're not a bank and don't have the same regulations as a bank is genuine, if self-inflicted.

But while they aren't a bank, they may be a fiduciary, so if they're serving their interests instead of ours where our money is concerned, they're asking for a beat-down in court.

This is all Meg Whitman's fault.

[Khyber]

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.

Re:Sigh

[Surt]

Bank, in the US, has a specific meaning, and requires FDIC insurance of your deposits, as well as lots of other good stuff that would prevent the sorts of abuses PayPal regularly visits on its customers.

Selling an unfinished product

[topham]

Selling an unfinished product, and having substantially amount of success at it will trigger PayPals fraud department.

Sad, but true...

Re:Payments continued?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

why can't he delete the link from his website? That would kill new payments from all but the most determined of people.

Re:How PayPal get away with murder

[theaveng]

When you use PayPal, you waive your right to a chargeback and agree to use Paypal's "dispute resolution mechanism".

Although I prefer to use paypal's dispute resolution, when they are unable to recover the money (because seller emptied his account), then I call my credit card company. I've done several chargebacks on paypal purchases.