Suggestion: more flexible contests

[seida]

I've thought it in the past, but with the NA dubbing contest it's hit me particularly strongly.

This is a worldwide game, with players in many many countries. There are only three regions - NA, EU, and JP, but of course many players do not live within those regions. Or their game is one region and they live somewhere else, for a variety of reasons.

I understand the dubbing contest requiring you to live in NA in as much as there are physical prizes/for shipping reasons, but for some reason you are not allowed to enter for fun even if you are willing to forfeit getting a prize.

Similarly, people with NA accounts are not allowed to collaborate with those who do not have NA accounts, even if the collaborators are willing to forfeit prizes.

Most FCs are international. Many of us have friends in this game who live in other countries. So why are the contests done like this?

In my particular case, I live in Japan and so have a JP account for ease of paying for game time etc. But I can never enter any English language contests, even if the prize is only digital. But I am in the minority. There is a much larger subset of people who, for example, have an NA account but do not live in the US. What are they supposed to do? There is never anything they can participate in.

In the spirit of MMOs I would like to see some contests in which region is not a barrier to entry. Many, many players do not reside in the region they are registered to. Or in my case, is not their native language. While I do speak Japanese I would not feel comfortable or confident entering a Japanese dubbing contest!

If there are some legal reasons relating to prizes, does that relate to digital prizes too, and how?

My server has players from a huge mix of countries! Why can we not work on something together?

I would appreciate it if it could be considered, at least.

[Enkidoh]

If there are some legal reasons relating to prizes, does that relate to digital prizes too, and how?

This is the reason - each country often has their own independent laws relating to how contests and competitions are run, even if the prizes are virtual, they still have to comply with legislation. Multiply that by however many countries where players come from and with each country having different laws (often with laws not matching between countries), it's not hard to see this sort of thing would make any lawyer curl up into the foetal position and start sobbing to themself.

Hence, SE sadly has to restrict contests to residents of certain areas so as to simplify their legal obligations. It's unfortunate (I think most players have seen a SE contest they would have loved to applied to only they couldn't because it wasn't available to residents of their country), but that's life sadly I guess. This is one of those times where red tape wins out I'm afraid.