Hello,
This morning despite the donations account being closed and donations not having been active for over a month, chargebacks started happening again from as far back as January. As my account is closed, I cannot simply respond and pay them off and paypal over the phone can’t think of a way to help me so this time rather than just take the hit and pay it off it looks like I get to have debt collectors chasing me for scammed money and possibly get to go to court when I refuse to hand it over. Excellent!
My initial reaction to this was to take the server down and just push Mirage out of my life as being bankrupted by some asshole in Brazil who thinks they are clever was really not my objective when I committed to spending tens of thousands of hours to developing something cool for free, so that’s what I did. After thinking about it a bit more though, my objective was to create something fun and although it is still early days I think I am achieving that, so tearing the game server down to shield myself from the stress of it simple existing is me spiting myself, and I think I wanted to do it so whoever it is that is taking all of this money from me and my family can’t play anymore – which is pretty short sighted and petty.
So, thinking logically about this, the game server will remain online and I am going to go to court against PayPal if I have to – because really, it is these guys that are the problem. I have done nothing wrong whatsoever, Mirage is totally non-profit, I am not a business, I am just a bloke building a thing that put in a mechanism so players could help out with the costs associated with running this stuff if they wanted, and some dickhead a million miles away has found a way of reversing that sentiment and costing me money. Paypal, instead of looking at the evidence, immediately get out their biggest gun and point it directly at me – wtf?
So yeah, this is going to go to debt collectors who will harass me and my family for months, and then yes, it will possibly go to court where I will likely lose because I know nothing about the legal system – but I’m happy to do it at this point, because fuck you paypal.
Just remember when you pass me homeless on the street to say hello!
Liam