4 ms·

A little rant: "USD only for App developers, WWW for buyers" I translate it to myself: "west: place with creative smart people. rest: dumb idiot consumers"

by nadam 16y ago

A little rant: "USD only for App developers, WWW for buyers" I translate it to myself: "west: place with creative smart people. rest: dumb idiot consumers" This is what always happen with 'gaming marketplaces', and 'mobile marketplaces'. This is the case with XNA, X-Box Live, android market etc... As someone from Hungary (Eastern Europe) I was naive enough to get excited about some of these in the past. I no longer do that. My first task is to check for this 'west-rest' rule. If I smell this I avoid the stuff like plague. Maybe a good startup idea for someone who is reading this: create non-protectionist gaming marketplaces? I think there would be huge demand for that.

yanw 16y ago
It's more likely due to Checkout's limitations.
- dagw 16y ago
  It's more likely that Checkout's limitations are due to Google's disinterest in the non-US world. This is just another consequence of that.
Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
Just came to reiterate and agree with you. As developer friendly Google generally is, i find this kind of attitude very annoying. The fact that the android marketplace is closed to lots of countries even two years (!!) after launch certainly tames any optimistic posture one might take regarding Google's attitude towards rest of the world developers.
- ido 16y ago
  How possible/easy it is for someone in the EU to register a company in the US (with a US bank account) without being a US resident? EDIT: A cursory search on google indicates it's possible, but it seems like a field rife with scams. Any advice from someone who has done it before would be highly appreciated.
jasonkester 16y ago
No need to go looking for conspiracy theories. The reason they don't do this is simple: It's hard. Look around at the plethora of ways to accept payment and send money online. Dozens of them, right? How many of them allow payouts to non-US citizens? One. PayPal, that's it. That's the only company that's managed to even partially solve the horrible problem of how to put money into a non-US bank account and not immediately go out of business due to fraud. They solved this because solving fraud issues is the only thing they do. And it took them a long time. And still they can't figure out how to do it for over half the countries in the world. Google doesn't hate Hungarians. They just don't know how to send you money. Try not to hold it against them.
- nadam 16y ago
  I don't understand why paying me money is a problem, and I don't get it what kind of fraud are we speaking about. Normally the following should happen: 1.I create an account on their site with my username and password. I log in with this account. 2. I upload the contents (game). 3. Logged in with this account I could: a.: specify my PayPal account to thich I expect the money to be transfered. b.: specify my international bank account number (SWIFT code) How can be there fraud? If I specify someone else's bank account number then only I can lose on that. I cannot imagine how could I do any 'fraud'. This is beyond me. Edit: It is quite absurd. We have a global economy in which it is easy for the money to flow in one direction but very hard (or sometimes impossible) to flow in the other.
  - sorbus 16y ago
    Stealing credit card numbers, creating accounts with those CC#s, and using purchases to drain them into your account is the first thing that comes to mind, though it's probably only one possibility.
    - nadam 16y ago
      That's the absurdity of the whole situation! Let's say I've stolen someone's credit card number. If I am a game producer, and I specify this credit card as the destination of the money I earned, then I only make the card owner a favor! On the other hand if I buy games using this credit card I cause harm to the credit card owner. Still, they happily allow you to be a consumer but not a producer.
patrickaljord 16y ago
If you read the second part of the slide, you'd have noticed muti-currency is coming on first half 2011. http://www.1up.com/media/03/8/3/6/lg/370.jpg http://www.1up.com/media/03/8/3/6/lg/370.jpg

by nadam 16y ago

yanw 16y ago

It's more likely due to Checkout's limitations.

dagw 16y ago
It's more likely that Checkout's limitations are due to Google's disinterest in the non-US world. This is just another consequence of that.

Raphael_Amiard 16y ago

Just came to reiterate and agree with you. As developer friendly Google generally is, i find this kind of attitude very annoying. The fact that the android marketplace is closed to lots of countries even two years (!!) after launch certainly tames any optimistic posture one might take regarding Google's attitude towards rest of the world developers.

ido 16y ago
How possible/easy it is for someone in the EU to register a company in the US (with a US bank account) without being a US resident? EDIT: A cursory search on google indicates it's possible, but it seems like a field rife with scams. Any advice from someone who has done it before would be highly appreciated.

jasonkester 16y ago

No need to go looking for conspiracy theories. The reason they don't do this is simple: It's hard. Look around at the plethora of ways to accept payment and send money online. Dozens of them, right? How many of them allow payouts to non-US citizens? One. PayPal, that's it. That's the only company that's managed to even partially solve the horrible problem of how to put money into a non-US bank account and not immediately go out of business due to fraud. They solved this because solving fraud issues is the only thing they do. And it took them a long time. And still they can't figure out how to do it for over half the countries in the world. Google doesn't hate Hungarians. They just don't know how to send you money. Try not to hold it against them.

nadam 16y ago
I don't understand why paying me money is a problem, and I don't get it what kind of fraud are we speaking about. Normally the following should happen: 1.I create an account on their site with my username and password. I log in with this account. 2. I upload the contents (game). 3. Logged in with this account I could: a.: specify my PayPal account to thich I expect the money to be transfered. b.: specify my international bank account number (SWIFT code) How can be there fraud? If I specify someone else's bank account number then only I can lose on that. I cannot imagine how could I do any 'fraud'. This is beyond me. Edit: It is quite absurd. We have a global economy in which it is easy for the money to flow in one direction but very hard (or sometimes impossible) to flow in the other.
- sorbus 16y ago
  Stealing credit card numbers, creating accounts with those CC#s, and using purchases to drain them into your account is the first thing that comes to mind, though it's probably only one possibility.
  - nadam 16y ago
    That's the absurdity of the whole situation! Let's say I've stolen someone's credit card number. If I am a game producer, and I specify this credit card as the destination of the money I earned, then I only make the card owner a favor! On the other hand if I buy games using this credit card I cause harm to the credit card owner. Still, they happily allow you to be a consumer but not a producer.

patrickaljord 16y ago

If you read the second part of the slide, you'd have noticed muti-currency is coming on first half 2011. http://www.1up.com/media/03/8/3/6/lg/370.jpg http://www.1up.com/media/03/8/3/6/lg/370.jpg