Purchasing an AI War license using a Visa card. Or not.

[Gankenstein]

Short version:

Verified by Visa is a hassle. It is going to take me some time to ascertain the VbV hoops I have to go through to obtain an AI War license are genuine. In the meantime, no sale for you, no license for me. Fail.

Long version:

Today I intended to purchase a license for AI War using a VISA card.

After supplying the usual credit card info plus additional (required) personal data I placed my order and then was taken to a "Verified by VISA" screen (iirc it was a popup, even). A security plugin in my browser warned me that cross-site scripting was taking place. So I declined registering with VbV and then was informed by BMT Micro (which appears to be the company proceesing payments for you) that processing of my order failed because "Your payment was declined by your bank".

Safety issues with Verified by Visa have been discussed on the web on several sites (you can google for more) and anyway it is not consistent with sane behaviour on the web to give out sensitive information in popups or frames where there is little possiubility of verifying where this info ends up.

I understand that VbV offers web merchants some safety against being victims of credit card fraud (though marketed as consumer protection). I'm fine with that purpose but feel the implementation puts me as a customer at a risk by forcing me to trust the VbV screens are genuine. I urge you to refrain from using VbV and similar schemes unless they have sane implementations.

The bank which has issued the VISA card does not yet have any record of an attempted payment (so how can they have declined it?). I will tak to them again tomorrow when they may have some info and someone knowledgable in VbV available.

[Echo35]

I have a Visa, but I use PayPal everywhere I can.

[x4000]

Hmm, that is not something I have very direct control over, given that it is our e-commerce site that handles that sort of thing.  But, I've turned down their Fraud Prevention settings from their default, so hopefully that will turn off the Visa thing.  Hope that helps!

[Gankenstein]

I've turned down their Fraud Prevention settings from their default, so hopefully that will turn off the Visa thing.  Hope that helps!

That did the trick. The "Visa thing" went away, I have my license  , you have been paid  and the Danish govt. grabbed 25% Sales Tax  (don't they always).

Thank you for a prompt response. Way to go, I'm impressed!

[x4000]

No problem!  Thanks for your support, and sorry for the trouble there before.  (And 25% sales tax!? That's crazy.)

[eRe4s3r]

Gankenstein - i know that comes too late but you could have bought it on Impulse, without the sales tax (of course, via paypal)

Funnily when you pay in $ via paypal you can entirely circumvent taxes, and its even legal (at least for the customer ,p) (it should be mentioned that this is (amongst other reasons) why paypal has such large fees when you receive money though)

[Gankenstein]

Thank you. Though I detest paying taxes (doesn't everyone?), I'll rather pay the extra 5$ and not have to install additional management software (Impulse) or having to "phone home" in order to reinstall (GamersGate) or such things. Gimme something which works even if my Interweb is b0rken.

Eventually I'll have to learn to use PayPal, I can see that...and them banks need to be told that Validated by Visa is epically stupidly implemented....but it's so hard catching up with this web 2.0 (or whatever), things were easier back when...ZX81, BBSes, 19.6 Kb/s modems, those were the days.

PS: Chris is right, taxes are insane here.

[Echo35]

Thank you. Though I detest paying taxes (doesn't everyone?), I'll rather pay the extra 5$ and not have to install additional management software (Impulse) or having to "phone home" in order to reinstall (GamersGate) or such things. Gimme something which works even if my Interweb is b0rken.

Actually, Impulse is EXTREMELY uninvasive, not to mention the fact that AI War's keys work anywhere, so you could have gotten it through Impulse, and just downloaded and used the .exe here instead. X is amazing and doesn't believe in DRM, which is the way things should be.

[x4000]

For that matter, you can buy the Steam version (which has very mild DRM in order to get to the Steamworks features), and then take the key it gives you and get a non-DRM version.

[Gankenstein]

... doesn't believe in DRM, which is the way things should be.

Agreed.

[Morthis]

Yeah I grabbed the steam version but simply entered the key in the downloaded game.  I tried running it through steam first, but after spending 10 minutes looking at it wanting to install the .net framework (which is already installed anyway) I just hit cancel and downloaded the game here and put in the key.

[x4000]

Yeah I grabbed the steam version but simply entered the key in the downloaded game.  I tried running it through steam first, but after spending 10 minutes looking at it wanting to install the .net framework (which is already installed anyway) I just hit cancel and downloaded the game here and put in the key.

There is a workaround for that here, if you're interested in the online achievements/leaderboards through Steam.  But if you're not fussed about those two components being online with Steam, that's the only difference between the versions.