Tag: protection

Paypal Will Not Protect Crowd-Funding Pledges


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Paypal has announced that crowd funding ventures will no longer qualify for payment protection, meaning you’ll no longer have outside help if the wine condoms, cat panties, or that completely legitimate hardcore sandbox MMO run by an MMA manager whose love for video games trumps his complete lack of experience making them doesn’t end up producing a final product.

New terms of service on the Paypal website remove payment protection from activities that include an entry fee and a prize, payments to government services, and payments on crowdfunding platforms:

  • Payments on crowdfunding platforms

The new terms are due to the heavy risks and uncertainties of crowdfunding. Unlike a straight purchase, the user pays to fund a product that may or may not reach fruition. Presumably this change in policy comes following losses incurred by Paypal in reimbursing people who lost out due to unfulfilled crowd funding (and there are a lot).

Back in 2014, Gamerant.com reported that only 37% of video game Kickstarters have fully delivered. MMO Fallout itself has reported on numerous failed projects crowdfunded by thousands only to shut down due to a mixture of incompetence and suspicious behavior.  Earlier this year, development on Ant Simulator shut down amidst allegations by an ex-developer that the money was blown on alcohol and strippers.

Users have until June 25th when the new terms go into effect to shut down their Paypal account if they do not wish to be included.

Check out MMO Fallout’s (somewhat) weekly column Crowdfunding Fraudsters, where we look at bad crowdfunding campaigns to avoid.

(Source: Paypal)

EA Origin Fraud Protection May Incur Delays


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If you’re looking to make a purchase in the Origin store, you may find your order delayed by up to three days. In a post released today on the Dark Age of Camelot website, Broadsword Entertainment warns that new fraud detection tools may flag purchases depending on several variables including number of codes purchased, resulting in the buyer not receiving their code until the next day.

This timeframe is dependant on the number of codes purchased at once as well as other variables. Most players should still receive their codes within 24 hours, however, it would be a good idea to order any new game time codes 72 hours prior to your account subscription ending if you wish to guarantee no subscription downtime.

Any user whose code isn’t delivered after three days is asked to contact EA’s customer support with the phrase “I did not receive my code after making a purchase on the Origin store. My order# is #####.” The news post warns that any other message could cause the email to be diverted to the DAoC crew, who can’t help with such problems.

(Source: Dark Age of Camelot)

Guild Wars 2: Genius Method of Catching NDA Violators.


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How do you stop someone from stealing your art and claiming it as their own? You watermark it, just enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of the actual image. How does a developer stop people from violating the non-disclosure agreement and posting screenshots of, say, Guild Wars 2 anonymously? Equal levels of watermarking.

Now, the above is not a screenshot from Guild Wars 2, as posting a screenshot of such feature from Guild Wars 2 even for proof of concept is what my lawyers refer to as “digging myself into a hole” that they will later “shoot and bury me in,” so instead I’m using an old April Fool’s teaser of the Guild Wars commando class. Click on the picture to enlarge it, and you can see my email address watermarked frequently enough that you couldn’t possibly crop a usable picture.

Obviously this doesn’t prevent people from posting their thoughts of the beta test without repercussion, but it does make it impossible to post screenshots without Arenanet taking action against the account.

Reminder to all closed beta players: you’re under NDA. Don’t risk breaking the NDA, you could permanently lose access to all ArenaNet games. ~RB2