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Comment by drtse4 | Hacker News Reader

Another Paypal horror story added to the list. If someone was wondering (as i did), no, he didn't let 600k on his paypal account. That's what he's earned since they limited his account 25th august.

See http://twitter.com/Toucanator/status/24089600756 and http://twitter.com/xnotch/statuses/24089647124 .

EDIT: Minecraft complete steam sales data,amazing: http://m00d.net/minecraft/sales/

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So he's sold 60k prepurchases at EUR 9.95 in a little over two weeks?! Holy cow.

Found some stats - http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp

This game is nearly everyday on the front-page of reddit/digg/etc... , and a lot of people are making youtube videos of their creations. With all this web coverage he doesn't need to spend money in advertising :).

A game that makes people build something (even if useless, it's still a game) and make it easy to share, instead of bovinely click around like in Zynga's games. Recipe for success?

Prepurchases? Pretty sure that could be the problem - - PayPal doesn't permit charging someone for goods that aren't going to ship immediately.

It's not exactly a prepurchase since for 13$ you get access to the alpha version.

Yeah, it blew up on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. For some reason the story didn't take hold over here on HN. This is why I read both sites - often you get great stuff over there that doesn't make it over the front page karma barrier here because not enough people read /new ;-)

I find it interesting that in limiting the account, they still allow deposits but not withdrawals along with a threat of keeping the money.

If they were truly concerned about that something fraudulent was going on they would not allow people to deposit money in either.

Deposits can be rolled back if the money is still there.

If anything that's a concession ("your business can continue, we aren't going to make your website shut down while you jump our hoops").

I wonder how much money PayPal has made keeping so-called fraudulent money in their coffers.

PayPal doesn't keep money it freezes for risk checks. If they determine fraud, then the money is returned to the sender (usually by force, as the reason it was held was due to a chargeback or bank reversal). If there was no fraud, then it's paid out after a 6 month hold.

Do they can collect interest on the money whilst they hold it?

I don't recall, but in all my other merchant agreements, it's stated in writing that funds held in reserve will be held in a non-interest-bearing account.

It seems to me he could switch to Google Checkout or Amazon Payments in the meantime until the situation gets resolved.

Neither of those have good support for countries outside the US. It's sad, but to date there's still no good alternative to Paypal. They suck but they're also the best.

I didn't realize that...in that case, I volunteer to let him use my PayPal account!

Enjoy the money laundering investigation, and say good bye to ever leaving your country again.

FUD.

In the US, the government doesn't even have to opportunity to prevent you from leaving the country.

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