The Indie Stone, creators of upcoming apocalypse RPG Project Zomboid, have been barred from selling Project Zomboid by Google Checkout. This seems egregiously unfair, but part of the big G’s reason for this smackdown is that they’re asking money for something that doesn’t yet exist. Indie Stone, for whom this is now the second time they’ve been denied a big pile of money which they claim to desperately need to fund Zomboid’s development, have devised a possible way around this.

Now, they’re asking you to buy games that do exist – which will be accompanied by a ‘free’ copy of Zomboid once it is available. Proceeds from this trio of games will fund Zomboid’s development, presuming that cash doesn’t also get locked away from them. What are these games? Ah, that’s the thing…



How does ‘Stand On Top Of The Other Guy But Be Bigger’ sound to you? Or ‘Droids’? Or text-based grammar-abusing vignette ‘Rock Paper Scizzorz?’

I cannot attest to the quality of these titles, but note that £5, £10 or £15 seems rather a high price for each of them. It’s probably a fair price for Project Zomboid though. What a shame you can’t pre-order that for £10, eh? There’s just no way to do that. All you can do is buy one of these other games for between £5 and £15 and get a free copy of the Zomboid alpha (plus all future updates) down the line. Which, you’ll agree, is nothing at all like paying between £5 and £15 to pre-order Project Zomboid. If only there was a way to do that.

There isn’t. But you can buy the other games, with a free copy of Project Zomboid, from here. Advise The Indie Stone, “just remember that Project Zomboid will only be a cut-down alpha when first released, and expanded upon in subsequent updates.”