I've been told that also who already bought the game could no longer download it. It looks like there's no effective way to deal with this issue. Given that Gemdalus and QUOD INIT EXIT IIo were the only paid-for games and that my other projects were not affected, I have now changed the payment model to pay-what-you-want: who bought the game can now download it again and, hopefully, the game will no longer be targeted by the scammers. See it as an early Christmas sale not to be missed ;)
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
For the record, a couple of hours ago there was another fraudulent purchase: so, the fact that the game is now pay-what-you-want didn't solve the issue. I just can't do anything about it (apart from reporting the purchases to itch.io, but they react very slowly - in fact, at the moment there are 6 purchases to be cancelled) and I'm utterly annoyed.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
The purchases follow this scheme: * the email address is <name><surname><number>@gmail.com (the first 11 times there were also dots separators); * the payment is made by credit card via Stripe; * the card holder name (sometimes with the address) is exposed on the invoice (unlike on the invoices of the regular purchases I've checked for comparison); * the card holder name does not match the one in the email address; * the card holder is from the US; * the IP is from some other country; * the payments is of $5 (the minimum amount); * the game is not downloaded.
My guess is that some hacker stole the credit cards information and makes low-value purchases to get the card holders names and addresses for bigger frauds.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
* the card holder name does not match the one in the email address;
You could sue your payment provider for not making any such checks. Depending on the payment provider 70-90% of the fees you have to pay aren't for any transaction costs (0% inside the EU with IBAN anyway, and even outside of it, for most banks which are part of SWIFT, no or only very low transaction fees), but just for insurances for fraudulent payments. Quote:
the card holder is from the US; * the IP is from some other country;
As long as Elon Musk is president of the USA, represented by it's puppet Donald Trump, I wouldn't accept any payments from the USA anymore anyway
Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't handle the payments directly, as I just have a page on itch.io - so, it's all up to them. They told me that they have reported the frauds to the credit cards providers. It's up to them to take action against who stole the credit card information.
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC
I bought and downloaded MAH for the C64 now and made a donation for Gemdalus!
Oh, your donation was really generous! Thanks a lot! Check out your email for the download key ;) I wish you lots of fun with the games!
@all
Please note that the method of buying another game and adding a donation for Gemdalus had to be dropped because it turned out that Gemdalus could not be downloaded even by who already had a key (see post #21).
RETREAM - retro dreams for Amiga, Commodore 64 and PC