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Markus Persson, creator of Minecraft, has funds wrongly frozen by Paypal

Started by Ultraporing Sep 10, 2010 at 1:36 PM 27 replies 10.9k views
Original Post
Ultraporing
Ultraporing
Markus Persson, the creator of the popular sandbox game Minecraft (http://www.minecraft.net) has had over 600,000 Euro in funds frozen by Paypal on the basis of "supsicious withdrawl or deposit".

Mr. Persson's product is NOT FRAUD in any way! Myself and countless others have supported Mr. Persson in his endeavors by purchasing his product through Paypal (please see the web community http://www.minecraftforum.net). The freezing of his funds is an atrocity. Mr. Persson is an independant game programmer and provides a legitimate product and unparalleled support for the folks who have purchased his game.

An excerpt from his blog:

“And.. Paypal. On the 25’th, they limited my account for unspecified reasons (a suspicious withdrawal or deposit! wow, thank you for that amazingly detailed information), and asked me for a bunch of vague documents. I did my best to give them what they asked for.

"My account is still limited. I’ve called them three times, they keep telling me it’s being reviewed. Most recently they told me it’d take up to two more weeks for it to get resolved, and that if they decide something bad’s being going on, they’re going to keep the money.

"There’s over 600000 euro in there. Money I was planning on investing in the new company.”

There is an entire community of people who support Mr. Persson and his work, including notable gaming companies like Valve Software. Please help us support him by petitioning Paypal to unlock his funds. Please repost this in your community blogs so we can get the word out and help an independent developer succeed!!!
“It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.”
― Hiromu Arakawa
ChurchSkiz
ChurchSkiz
It's the reason I've avoided PayPal whenever possible. They literally have the right to screw you for no reason at all. Spend 10 minutes on the internet and you'll see stories that will scare the bejeezus out of you.

When they freeze assets for "suspicious" activity. They keep the money and don't give it back, forcing you to spend thousands in legal fees. There was a class action suit over it a few years ago, they lost, but all it did was force them to make a more blatant signing away of your rights when you open an account.

http://paypalsucks.com/

Edit: At worst, if you use PayPal, always clear your balance into your bank account.
Rycross
Rycross
If you read around on the internet, suspicious activity can be something as simple as "Received a large deposit." Its probably suspicious to them because he has 600,000 euros in the account (possibly accumulated over a short time period) and nothing more. The best advice I've heard with regards to PayPal is to limit it to a small, secondary bank account and regularly move funds out to your main account. Move any funds necessary for payment in as needed. This is the method that I use.

Remember, PayPal is not a bank, and they are not regulated as a bank. They can screw you over and you will have limited, or no, recourse. Don't trust them more than you absolutely need to, and don't keep money in a PayPal account long-term that you can't afford to lose.
JSoftware
JSoftware
Happens often if you receive a large number of small deposits, and you haven't provided proper creditentials
way2lazy2care
way2lazy2care
Quote:
Original post by Rycross
Remember, PayPal is not a bank, and they are not regulated as a bank. They can screw you over and you will have limited, or no, recourse. Don't trust them more than you absolutely need to, and don't keep money in a PayPal account long-term that you can't afford to lose.

I wonder if they'll ever turn to more regulation for them.
Rycross
Rycross
This is actually getting some good coverage in the indie gaming blogs. He actually did clear transfer money out of his PayPal account regularly. People are claiming that the > 600000 EUR was accumulated since his account was locked, plus one or so week.

I guess he got featured on some popular YouTube channel, plus the TF2 blog so his sales probably spiked, at which point his account was locked and the money continued to accumulate.

Sucky situation for him, but I'm still jealous of the amount of money he's generated off a self-developed game. I'm so lazy in comparison.
MaulingMonkey
MaulingMonkey
The irony here for me is that when I bought Minecraft, I thought to myself, gee, he's using Paypal, that company I've heard so many horror stories about on the intertubes, involving indefinitely locked accounts.

And then they lock his account.
ChurchSkiz
ChurchSkiz
Quote:
Original post by Rycross
This is actually getting some good coverage in the indie gaming blogs. He actually did clear transfer money out of his PayPal account regularly. People are claiming that the > 600000 EUR was accumulated since his account was locked, plus one or so week.


600k euro in one week? If that's accurate that's awesome, but sounds far-fetched.
Sirisian
Sirisian
heh, everyone bought that game (including me a while back).
Rycross
Rycross
Quote:
Original post by ChurchSkiz
600k euro in one week? If that's accurate that's awesome, but sounds far-fetched.


More like 4-5 weeks based on what people are saying, since it includes the time his account has been frozen. He recently got a publicity bump. Still a bit hard to believe, but possible.
DaveMS
DaveMS
Those stats are impressive! Some serious income rolling in there!
taby
taby
DaveMS, no doubt... I think John Carmack went and bought a Ferrari at this point in his life? :)
Ravuya
Ravuya
PayPal has also screwed over a few charities in the past - I remember that Something Awful no longer accepts PayPal after their donation account for Hurricane Katrina relief was frozen at something like $30k in nine hours.

I can kind of see PayPal's side on it (it is kind of suspicious to see these huge surges) but they seriously need to actually fix this shit when it happens instead of just turning it off and ignoring everyone for an indeterminate period of time.
samster581
samster581
Quote:
Original post by taby
I wonder if it's because Persson's using a pre-order system instead of donations?

If so, that would be a stupid reason for Paypal to block his funds.

I see this on google news: http://www.devicemag.com/2010/09/10/paypal-holding-over-600000-euros-from-minecraft-developer/


He calls them sales, not donations:

Blog: "Those 600k euros are the result of around 60k sales in the past 16 days."

Sales = profit in your pocket, so he can do anything he wants with that money, buy an expensive yatch, whatever.

Funny, I never heard of Minecraft before. I don't understand its overnight popularity.



BeanDog
BeanDog
I had several thousand dollars in revenue frozen for months by PayPal last year. That's why I jumped ship to Amazon Payments, which has been ludicrously better than PayPal in every imaginable way.
samster581
samster581
What would you do if you hosted a server where gamers connected, suddenly had 100,000 people join over the weekend, then had your
money account frozen? Would you continue to honor those sales, and let people connect, or would you block them off? Afterall, bandwith
costs money, and you don't know if you're ever gonna see that money again.
Rycross
Rycross
Quote:
Original post by samster581
What would you do if you hosted a server where gamers connected, suddenly had 100,000 people join over the weekend, then had your
money account frozen? Would you continue to honor those sales, and let people connect, or would you block them off? Afterall, bandwith
costs money, and you don't know if you're ever gonna see that money again.


Unless you want to get a reputation for bad customer service and lost sales, of course you'd honor the sales. Its not the customer's fault that you chose a bad payment processor.

I have no idea what you'd do if the bandwidth costs would cause you to fold. Lawyers would probably be involved. Ideally, if you're running an actual company you'd have some sort of buffer to cover hosting costs in situations such as these.
eedok
eedok
Quote:
Original post by BeanDog
I had several thousand dollars in revenue frozen for months by PayPal last year. That's why I jumped ship to Amazon Payments, which has been ludicrously better than PayPal in every imaginable way.

Too bad you can't use it in when you're outside the states like this developer

Seen this story on several sites, and it's annoying how many posts are he wouldn't have this problem if he used {paypal alternative only available in the US and/or possibly the UK}

Paypal's international competition is near non-existent

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