Enemy Known: Xenonauts vs Paypal

Oh, not again. Paypal is increasingly the scourge of indie games - it's opted to cruelly and unnecessarily freeze funds for Minecraft and Project Zomboid in the past, and the latest victim of its administrative idiocy is enticing X-COM reimagining Xenonauts. "Currently our Paypal account has been locked down and closed, so we don't have access to any of the new money coming in or any access to the funds currently in the account," say devs Goldhawk Interactive. "As a result of this, we've temporarily disabled the pre-order page."

This means they can't access several thousands dollars in pre-order payments which they were using to fund development, though Paypal have at least said they'll be allowed to get their money in 180 days time. As in, half a year. Lunacy, absolute lunacy. Goldhawk say this won't be terminal to the project, though may affect assorted bits of polish and additional features. Plus, lead dev Chris England only just quit his dayjob to go full time on Xenonauts, so this is exceptionally poor timing for him. "Losing our only source of income is obviously going to be disruptive to the project, as we were getting a good source of income from pre-orders up to this point," he notes.

They will, however, honour all pre-orders regardless of whether they've got the money yet. For now though, pre-ordering remains closed while Goldhawk try and locate a less evil alternative payment system. Pre-ordering, by the way, got you an instant copy of the current game build, so a real, available product was being sold here despite Paypal's pre-order alarm bell having sounded.

Best of luck, chaps. Getting onto Steam right about now would doubtless be a big help, if anyone important is listening...

And Paypal? You're goons. GOONS.