What you're not mentioning is that you have to buy it via Paypal. If paying through those nincompoops is the only option, I simply abstain. No matter what it is.

In short, they aren't technically a bank, so legally, they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want with your money.

You don't have to have a PayPal account though:

How did "whatever it's worth" turn into "whatever you want"?
The credit card option is also PayPal, just not with an account.

For me WoG was well worth the full price I paid last year. In fact I paid for it twice because I bought it for my brother for Christmas. Still tempted to buy the WiiWare version too....

PayPal can be annoying, I've heard plenty of scare stories. But in this case you can buy without setting up an account so what's the worst that can happen? None of the scare stories (that I've heard) have ever included PayPal stealing credit card numbers or over charging. Just play the WoG demo and see if it's worth the small amount of risk.

You get it via steam, and I haven't got an account. Does this (using steam) stop me from downloading it onto a couple of machines? I've never got anything from steam as I keep reading bad things about it.

Paid $5 via PayPal, and they sent me a secret link with the download of the different executables. I thought I had to choose one version. Guess I will pay again to keep my promise!

I'm sure the point gnolam was trying to make was that PayPal is an evil company, and any transactions through them feeds their pockets. PayPal takes a cut of almost every transaction, so even using a credit card to pay will support them.

Anyway, World of Goo rocks.

If your conscious tells you to pay the other $5, go ahead and pay it; you just don't need to click on the download link once the transaction is complete

EDIT:

My credit card company charges me for using my card. Not annual, mind you. Just a percentage of my unpaid balance.

I don't have to pay them at all if I pay it off early enough (before the statement becomes due), or if I use my debit card instead.

Paypal is man-in-the-middle. The 2Dboy company probably chose to incur that transaction cost for them (Paypal) to handle all the encrypted transactions, credit card number storage, and security measures (physical, electronic, etc.) that they (2Dboy) don't want to have to deal with. I'd probably do the same thing: I'm not equipped to have my company (if/when I own my own) sued if a disgruntled employee wants to run off with all my customers' information. I'd rather sue someone else if they botch it

Only 1 cent? I donated 10! \o/

But you still have to pay through PayPal.
Besides what Billybob said, which is reason enough to avoid them (and if even that isn't enough, there are the blatant security issues), they're still fucking incompetent. I recently - and reluctantly - had to use their credit card payment service (which I'm guessing is the same one as these guys are using). Never again. Any payment company who, mid-transaction, decides to redirect a customer through goddamned fucking IP geolocation to a horribly machine translated page that seemed almost deliberately designed to fuck up the entire purchase doesn't just deserve to go bankrupt. They deserve to burn.

Nah, it is true. I take it you've never heard any of the horror stories. I was hit by PP too, almost screwed out of $2500. Luckily, it was resolved, but I'm very cautious about using them now, unfortunately, it isn't totally feasible to get rid of them entirely.

To elaborate a bit more on this, I had a friend deployed overseas who needed me to handle a money issue. He sent money to my PP account from his debit card, $2500 to be exact. I knew it would look fishy from Paypal's perspective, so I called them to make sure everything would be fine (there was no phone # for him to be reached at, etc). They told me once the money was in my account all was good, unless someone filed a complaint. So imagine my surprise after that $2500 was transferred out of paypal, and they decided to 'investigate' the funds. They put a hold on the money (which was already gone, they made it available for withdrawl), dropping me to a negative balance. They attempted to do an electronic withdrawl from my bank account for $2500... luckily for me I didn't have sufficient funds available. They tried several other dollar amounts too, 2400, 2200, etc. My bank contacted me to see WTF was up with all the attempted withdrawls, luckily they didn't pay out and come after me for that. PP kept telling me they couldn't contact him via phone, too dense to listen to what I was telling them they told me before about the issue. They told me to have him email, after he did that it wasn't good enough and they wanted a fax, etc. Nothing was satisfactory to them. They told me I had 30 days to make it right. I told them to cancel the transaction and refund all the money to the other end, and we'd move the money without them. They refused to do so, sent me to collections, etc. Turns out my buddy had to do a chargeback (luckily he ran it as credit and not debit, another plus to American debit cards ) to get the money back and ended up mailing me a check, at which point I had to deal with their asshole collection agency. Thats a whole other story though.

They wanted all kinds of personal info from me too, copies of bank statements, credit card statements, drivers license, social security number, etc. They kept hassling me for it, even though I kept saying no way, just close the account. Then mysteriously one day I get an "investigation complete" email and my account unlocked, etc.

But yeah, FMC, read their ToS. They can do pretty much whatever they want when it comes to holding funds, etc. They are NOT FDIC insured, they aren't legally a bank, therefore they don't fall under fair banking laws, etc. The fact that they don't mention being FDIC insured and the fact that they don't require identification/SSN/etc to open an account proves that (these new anti-terrorism laws require banks to keep positive identification on file). So it isn't terrorism, and it isn't unmotivated.

That's called interest. You aren't charged for using the card (unless you pay an anual fee or something). As you said, you're charged for carrying a balance, and utilizing their money for more than a few weeks. There is a distinction there. I use my credit card for anything I may need to dispute, and pay it in full when the bill rolls. I pay no fees at all, and gain added protection (CC companies are more willing to work with you because it's their money on the line, with a debit card it's your money so they don't have less motivation; also CC's carry more protection against fraud/etc).

0.01 is useless. Paypal's fees are more than that. Luckily, fees are capped at the transaction amount, so net effect for the receiver is 0 on that 1 cent transaction.