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[jrjellybeans]

PayPal > all

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

I'm familiar with this page myself and while I agree that a lot of it is correct, I would like to point out that the paypal customer service was phenomenal when we used it earlier this year.

We were helped quickly (by an Indian sounding person however) and we were very satisfied.

[Poor Lazlo]

by an Indian sounding person however

As long as you could understand each other, and they solved your problem, no bad thing. 

[jrjellybeans]

As long as you could understand each other, and they solved your problem, no bad thing. 

Of course, we could understand her

The only reason I mentioned that is because I've been hearing lots of people say things like "I hate it when they outsource jobs to India and I have to speak to some person I can't understand."

I think this Texas life is getting to me

[Terry]

Anyone know much about FastSpring? I've seen it used for both Machinarium and Saira now, and I like how simple and straightforward it seems to be from the user side of things (compared to BMT Micro, which asks for a customer VAT ID)

[alspal]

Anyone know much about FastSpring? I've seen it used for both Machinarium and Saira now, and I like how simple and straightforward it seems to be from the user side of things (compared to BMT Micro, which asks for a customer VAT ID)

It certainly seems like a nicer interface compared to BMT micro, to buy things from.

I think the people here liked it:
http://www.indiegamer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14004

[FastSpringCEO]

I noticed someone mentioned a FastSpring download being slow.  That is pretty rare for us.  In general, over 98% of buyers receive very fast downloads.  There are rare cases where something unique is going on between a given user's ISP and our distributed download system that can cause issues, but we have alternatives to offer when that happens, so in the future, be sure to let us know if you buy from us and are having any trouble at all and we will respond promptly.  We respond to all support requests from vendors and end users within 12 hours or less, including on most weekends and during off-hours, though typically response time is within 1-2 hours.

We host downloadable files at no extra charge.  We utilize Amazon.com's S3 bandwidth service which has the nice benefit of letting you manage the number of times customers can re-download while providing a reliable and secure global file distribution network through Amazon's infrastructure.

- Dan from FastSpring E-Commerce

[Oddbob]

That's good to know, thanks for the response Dan. Much appreciated.

[Snakey]

Cool, I think I might use FastSpring in future.

[Martin 2BAM]

World of Goo had a paypal/something-else combo I believe.
They had their own paypal processor.

I don't know if it was new or old but I bought via paypal earlier this year with the "pay whatever you think" promotion.

I'm also trying to build a system to handle "premium" service for a game, which uses paypal.

Maybe someone could elaborate?

For all I know, if you have a PHP+MySQL server... it's pretty straightforward to integrate your site to paypal.

Regards

[Del_Duio]

I was gonna mention Aquaria and plimus but you already beat me.

from a consumer standpoint I really like what Tale of Tales use, Payloadz (www.payloadz.com). but ive also never had problems with BMT micro.

they are pretty fast, link appears instantly. and if your link expires they have a form you can submit to get a new link

I've used Payloadz for about 4 years and have never had an issue with them either.

EDIT: To elaborate a bit more, you have to set up your existing PayPal account with Payloadz, and then once the customer purchases your game they're given a randomzied link. They then have 48 hours to download the game and once they do the link is nullified. They also have options for coupons and stuff IIRC but I haven't used any yet.

[Notch]

I've never had any trouble with Paypal. Once I hit some level of incoming money (don't remember what), I had to verify that I am indeed a real person by emailing pictures of a utility bill, once, which was a bit troublesome because the street I live on had just changed name.

But since then, no problems at all.

[kometbomb]

Sorry if this is a common question but is there a good reason for using a more comprehensive service than PayPal and your own hosting? Is it just a matter of convenience so that you don't have to worry about writing/testing more code? Or, is there more (security, legality, cost) to consider?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there's a lot to consider. paypal doesn't automatically send emails to people after they buy something, and sending them manually is hard work and causes people to get upset that they don't get the game instantly. also, paypal provides no fraud protection. and paypal doesn't work in many countries, doesn't accept payments from many international credit cards.

[Martin 2BAM]

there's a lot to consider. paypal doesn't automatically send emails to people after they buy something, and sending them manually is hard work and causes people to get upset that they don't get the game instantly. also, paypal provides no fraud protection. and paypal doesn't work in many countries, doesn't accept payments from many international credit cards.

Yet is the best small business solution I guess.
Do you know what countries have problems with paypal? I heard about Japan/Europe issues.
I think it works with the cuntries that actually pay for games.

The paypal integration with PHP is quite easy... there are lots of examples on the web.
Little Web programming experience is required; You need two pages:

1. The payment processor (IPN)
PayPal "POST"s transaction updates to an internal php link you specify.
You generate a unique hash.
Store the hash + issue date in a database table (Also store transaction data just in case).
Send a mail to the account with the hash/link. (php "mail()" function)

2. The download link
Check if the hash is in the database and hasn't expired.
Pass the file through (set HTTP headers accordingly), or show an error.


Regards

[Christian Knudsen]

Do you know what countries have problems with paypal? I heard about Japan/Europe issues.
I think it works with the cuntries that actually pay for games.

Wait, are you saying that people in Japan and Europe don't pay for games?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

@nitram - that requires a lot of web coding which most indie devs aren't capable of, and that's *just* to send people a download link when they buy something. that doesn't fix the problem of people changing the amount given to paypal (which is very easy to do) and getting the game for a lower price, and doesn't fix people who pay and then ask paypal for a refund immediately, so that they get the game and pay nothing, or pay with stolen credit cards etc. -- besides the huge number of countries paypal doesn't allow (like russia, a lot of eastern europe, most of south america) -- of course those countries buy fewer games, but is it really worth cutting off entire countries that do in fact buy games just because you want to save 5% or so extra per sale over real e-commerce services like bmt-micro, fastspring, etc.? would that extra 5% per sale saved make up for all those lost sales in those countries? from my own data it would not.

[Martin 2BAM]

chrknudsen:
Nope. They do, but I've heard there are complications to pay via PayPal for them.
On another topic, countries which do not support paypal are not an important market volume to care about.

Paul:
It's a bit complicated, I know, but any game programmer can easily figure it out and avoid the paying the middle-man.
The IPN sends you all sorts of information, like a webform would do.
You need to check the product-name against the product-price, to see if those are correct.

About rates, I agree to use a service if you don't really want to waste time or if you really need a web-cart like service... because they really make it too easy.
Also I don't have real experience on the "chargeback fraud" that PayPal is well known for.

But for just a single product, I don't know if it's really viable.
You need an International Visa or MasterCard for those services anyway; PayPal accepts those.
If your country's bank doesn't give you an int'l card, then you will not be able to pay to fastspring either.

Also notice that Fastspring has a 9% fee, not 5% (The 6%+1$ option is the same, $1 in a $20 bucks game is 5%, totalling 11%)
Let's say I make $5000 (250 units) from a game sales. With FastSpring I'm loosing 14% (total) against 5% with just a PayPal processor.


But yet, your point is valid. I don't have enough experience.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a lot of indie game devs are not game programmers, though -- it's not always the programmer of a game that also runs the business, sometimes the artist or designer does, or sometimes they use things like game maker and there's no programmer at all.

and that wouldn't be cutting out the middle man exactly, because the middleman still does a ton of things paypal doesn't, so it'd be more like killing your postman, buying a phone, and saying you cut out the middleman because you no longer have to send letters to people, you can just call them instead (but what if you want to send them packages? etc.)

as for the percents, i use bmt-micro, which is 9.5%, paypal is 30 cents plus 2.9%, so you'd be saving about 6% between the two. and again, your calculation of what you'd lose doesn't include all the purchases you wouldn't get at all due to people not being able to buy your game if they didn't have an international credit card and only had normal credit cards.

paypal also doesn't allow people to pay by check or money order, and though those are rare that's an important option occasionally for people who have no other choice.

[Martin 2BAM]

It added up to 14% because the way of colleting the earned money would be through paypal anyway. Am I mistaken? How does BMT pays you?

Are you sure about the local credit cards? I'm sure I cant use a local Argentinian card on most processors. I mean, they would need to have affiliates all around the globe to do that, and FastSpring/BMT-micro don't look that big. Not even PayPal can!

Paypal takes local credit card if you're on any country on the top list here, as I suppose most middle-men do.

I'm starting to look like a PayPal employee XD.
I want to clarify that I hate the fact that it's really a pain in the ass to withdraw money here in Argentina. But again it's almost my only choice.

Regards

[Over00]

Here's another option I'd look at if I was to release a downloadable game.

Disclaimer: I'm a web programmer so obviously it might be easier for me to figure all of this stuff but if you're serious about it and do some reading I believe it could still be done easily.

- Get a cheap VPS (Virtual Private Server) with more than enough bandwidth (I won't make advertisement here but there's packages that would fit this).

- Install Joomla: http://www.joomla.org/

- Install the component DOCMan: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/e-commerce/subscriptions/7234

- Configure your Paypal account and you're set

Ok there's more to it but it's still fairly easy.

That's NOT a turn-key solution but it MIGHT be worth to think about it for some people.

I repeat... This solution might not fit everyone. That's just another option for someone who likes to handle things himself and is not afraid to learn a thing or two.

I have no experience with turn-key solutions so maybe it's a bit over the top compared to what's existing.