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You must reside in the United States or Canada to enter this contest
mecas
Member Posts: 8
You know, Other guys use the site other than U.S.
Please open the comps to the world or stop advertising them to us outside the U.S.A
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Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Actually , not political at all. Usually legal property rights.
More down to the people who are sponsoring the giveaways mmorpg.com have no control over this.
I support this thread, many Europeans like myself use this site on a daily basis, id love a comp every once in awhile I can enter
There are a couple companies that will recieve shipping in any country, and ship it off to you. They'll even ship stuff off to Aircraft carriers. Costs around $100 to $200 a shipment.
So you can participate.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
as the staff of mmorpg have said, 99.99% of all of their give away contests that are physical items (computer hardware ect) are based on the company's rules that are "donating" the items for the contest. if logitech want to give away 100 mice on mmorpg but limit it to only people living in DC or san fransisco there is not a thing mmorpg can do about it.
some times contests are location locked do to trades tariffs that counties impose as well. though that seems to be less of an issue now days.
im sure mmorpg would have no problem hosting contests that are open to people living on pluto provided the companies that are giving the items away for it... allow that region to be included
Has something to do with legal mumbo jumbo that restrict companies from giving away items in a contest outside of the US and Canada. Has nothing to do with MMORPG.com or the people giving the crap away wanting to be jerks to the rest of the world.
I would have to go look, but I bet I could look and find the same thing in Europe/Asia on sites based there, that other people could use....It's just the way it is....
A lot of these contests for the United States, you cannot win in every state, a lot are reduced to the continental U.S. (no Alaska/Hawaii or outside territories)...Then you have some that exclude a handful of states, because something with the contest doesn't match up law wise with every state....Not even all the states are really states, some call themselves 'common wealths', and they run a lot different than other 'states'.... So if a lot of contests do not even include every state, because of rules/regulations...Now compound it with other countries...
I've run online contests for the various companies I've worked for, so I can tell you from experience that' there's a lot of hurdles that other countries impose in order to be able run contests. The purpose of the hurdles isn't to be restrictive but to actually protect the consumer from the 'contests' that aren't legit and are frauds/scams. There's also certain value limitations and limitations on what can be shipped and what can't. When I did the 'EVE Rocks' contest at EVEVault, it was several weeks of working with the legal team at IGN, our managing editor, CCP and various other people to make sure I could pull off an international contest - it's definitely not an easy process.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It surely isn't easy to set up if you never did it, but some companies do it regularly (like, MMORPG..)and have a huge legal team anyways. It surely isn't hard to run a content to win a motherboard if you do those lik every year.
Obviously there can be rules that prevent you from running this contest in country x, but running the contest itself ain't hard.
They also could decide to only allow contest that are open to everyone, or only to advertise to people that can enter. It's not like there is nothing they can do.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
This mainly. It's hard enough for companies to navigate all the different state laws in the US without having to take into account export laws, and local laws of every other country they'd want to include.
For example, here in Venezuela for a long time (IIRC in the 90's and early 00's) there was no law that considered the posibility of winning something in a sweepstakes or simmilar, it was actually illegal for a company to give away something for nothing (it was an unintended side effect of an anti-corruption law IIRC, but still legally binding). So every contest and sweepstakes you saw required you to actually give 1 bolivar (less than 1 cent back then) in exchange for whatever you won. Technically, according to the rules, you weren't winning the article itself, but the chance to buy it for 1 bolivar. One funny thing, though... 1 bolivar coins were so worthless back then (the metal was worth more than the coin) that they were rather rare, so usually when they were going to give you the prizes, whoever gave it carried several coins so if you didn't have one they would give it to you behind the cameras.
That isn't the case anymore, but even now it would be a legal headache. If I were to win a sweepstakes for a physical item I would need them to do lots of paperwork to receive (and them to send it). At the very least I'd need an invoice with the actual cost of the item, then I'd need to register it on customs, pay the taxes for the full price (even if I didn't actually pay for it), in the case of computer stuff it would be 5% of the cost as import taxes for anything worth more than $100 + 12.5% as general taxes and go to another city to receive it, and that added to the currency exchange control that would make them have to do some extra paperwork as well to say what I'm receiving, how are they sending it, how did I get the resources to get it (since I can't access foreign currency legally unless it's using some specific legal cases) and stuff like that.
BTW.. they have done worldwide sweepstakes before, but for digital items... I won a copy of guild wars on this site, for example, and I'm in Venezuela...
There are also rules that change from country to country on what and how much you can receive from contests, taxes and stuff like that.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
They run this site to make money, why would they turn down advertisers/money? I don't think they have people lining up, hoping they drop someone, so they can get their name up on here...A lot of people are on here, but I do not think it would be a smart business practice to turn away money/advertisers.
No one said running a contest is hard. Meeting the country by country requirements which are different for each type of contest and each type of prize is time and resource intensive process. For most companies, time and resources spent have to be balanced against the return on investment and prioritized against other tasks. If there was One Magic Template for universal contest procedure and everything from shipping to labor was free, I'm sure MMORPG.com would be all over the OMT like white on rice.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yeah I support this thread.
One of reasons I am looking for EU based website. There is no english language mmorpg focused good enough yet and with forum though (unless I can't find? any suggestions? please send pm with links).
Not that cause I actually think I would win contests / giveaways, just I am really sick and tired of being 'second class user'.
Some cr*p virtual items for everyone and actual nice real life items for US & Canada only. Not fun.
As for 'legal hurdles' ,etc
I understand.
But I don't care. Hurdles can be overcome.
Uhm, becauae the rest of the world are commies or what? (and those maple syrup lovers are on the suspect list as well but we don't want them to know that we suspect them)....
Really, either some contests for the rest of the world only or a few multinational would be nice.
They have done a few contest open to the whole world, just that the prizes were not physical items.
At least I remember two last year, first one the prizes were digital copies of Guild Wars Complete (I won a copy), the other one was a year subscription to Rift. Probably there have been more, but those are the two ones I remember offhand.
What can men do against such reckless hate?