Quote Originally Posted by Packetdancer View Post
Not sure what the specifics are with regards to Square-Enix, but putting on my "I used to work in game dev" hat for a moment, I can say that in my own experience, running contests internationally was a massive headache because of different laws in different areas. (Things like "do you have to offer the option of taking an equivalent value in cash for whatever your prize is", which means you have to set a cash value on something which may be purely digital, whether there are specific laws on what channels you must use to notify contest winners, etc.)

So at least in my own experience we ended up relying on publishing and distribution partners in various regions to handle region-specific details for us where we could. And if our partner in that region couldn't or wouldn't handle the local logistics of a promotion, we just excluded that region.

Now, in SQEX's case they are the dev and the publisher both -- whereas I used to just work in dev, not publishing -- so hypothetically they already have legal teams to handle a variety of different regions. And thus who can presumably handle all the legal fluff around promotions and giveaways in their specific region.

But as was pointed out, I don't think they officially publish in Latin America (though I may be wrong).

So I suspect it may be a matter of "we restrict it to regions we already have an established policy and legal guidance for running promotions in." And that may include regions they don't officially publish FFXIV in, but do officially publish other games in (and thus may have that established policy already).
I thought about that and maybe it's the most reasonable explanation, but that still leaves me wondering about French Guiana - since it's a french territory (much like the case with USA and Hawaii) and they publish in France it should be allowed to participate, shouldn't them?