Project Zomboid, the zombie survival RPG by indie devs The Indie Stone, is looking to be a pretty exciting title for fans of the living dead. It’s logical to assume that some of these same fans would want to support its development through pre-orders and donations then. This is exactly what had been happening over at the Project Zomboid site for a while now. Due to cautionary tales from other indie developers, the guys at Indie Stone decided to set up both a PayPal and a Google Checkouts account for people to send monetary donations along with their pre-orders. The donations weren’t mandatory but if a fan decided he or she wanted to support the development they were free to do so. Pretty standard stuff in the indie scene.
That is until Indie Stone realized that Google hadn’t given them any of their cash yet after about a month of donations. This was followed by a notice from Google informing the team that they would need to remove the Google Checkouts tool from their site and stop taking donations through Google’s service. This was the only information provided to the team. This left quite a few questions in the air, as the devs put it, “Does it get refunded? Do Google hoard it indefinitely? Do we get it some day? We find zero information on this no matter how deep we look, and no way to contact them”.
After a bit of hunting, Google Checkouts was finally able to be contacted and a long, explanatory email was written detailing the situation. Unfortunately, Google responded simply with a stock response that didn’t correct or explain anything, leaving the team still without its money or any answers. At this point, Google still holds all of the donation funds and it is unclear whether or not they will be forwarded to Indie Stone, returned to customers, or just held in a state of limbo for the rest of time. While one would hope that Google would clear up such a situation quickly, it appears that the community needs to get the word out there in order to initiate action on the corporation’s part. For now, fans interested in Project Zomboid should head over to the site and pre-order it…just make sure to use PayPal.
