Honest Question Regarding Rules

[OMega_ARcane]

Hi Everyone,

I am wondering if it would be against the rules if someone were to raffle off gift cards to FC members. Not anything crazy, but small things here and there like $5.00 gift cards, and would it be against the rules if that FC had something like whoever does (X) best, or most wins the gift card. More of a contest then giveaway.

[Pastahnak]

Any prizes I'd talk about those only on discord

[Tsubaki75]

That could very easily be considered rmt in the tos regardless or your intentions. All it would take is 1 person being salty for losing to report it. You'd be better served using only ingame items/gil as prizes

[Dustytome]

I believe it's an issue if you're doing something like "Give me 5,000 gil per entry for a chance to win a $5 mogstation item." If you're just giving things away without a cover charge for a ticket then you should be fine.

[alimdia]

Agreed with Dusty, I don't think you'd be in trouble as long as you don't charge an entry fee. Worst case scenario you can distribute the gift cards through Discord.

[OMega_ARcane]

Hmm...That makes perfect sense Tsubaki, thank you guys. How's about stuff on the mogstation? I noticed an option to "gift" items. Can you also gift crysta so they can buy what they want?

[alimdia]

You can't gift crysta, but you can gift item codes, again as long as you're not charging an entry fee, otherwise it could be seen as a form of selling.

[OMega_ARcane]

okay so a few scenarios in mind "donate to gil bank to win"-that sounds like a no go now with these replies "raffle for fun"-sounds okay, but what about something like a gathering contest "get all the ds ore" or something like that for example....maybe I should just scrap the idea and play it safe.

[Dustytome]

okay so a few scenarios in mind "donate to gil bank to win"-that sounds like a no go now with these replies "raffle for fun"-sounds okay, but what about something like a gathering contest "get all the ds ore" or something like that for example....maybe I should just scrap the idea and play it safe.

If anything outside of the game is involved it needs to be a straight up giveaway with no entry fee/object, otherwise it can be seen as a form of gambling/rmt. I believe people have been able to do dice gambling type things in game as long as they aren't spamming, so you could perhaps do in-game only prizes (crafted items, gil prizes) with some type of entry and the drawing would have to be live with everyone doing a dice roll (one per entry for prize?) and you choose the winner based on pre-determined rules stated within the game. Basically for an entry raffle type deal you have to handle everything in game so if there's a dispute the GMs have all the info on their systems. I would absolutely check with a GM about that if you went that route though and don't accept a canned response as it's always possible that SE can change their stance on such things.

[Niwashi]

okay so a few scenarios in mind "donate to gil bank to win"-that sounds like a no go now with these replies "raffle for fun"-sounds okay, but what about something like a gathering contest "get all the ds ore" or something like that for example....maybe I should just scrap the idea and play it safe.

The basic rule on RMT is that nothing in-game can be exchanged for anything out-of-game. As long as you avoid receiving anything in exchange for people entering or winning your contest, then giving an out-of-game reward wouldn't involve such an exchange, so should be ok so far as I can tell.

"donate to gil bank to win" — definitely RMT
"raffle for fun" — I agree, that sounds like it should be ok
gathering contest — so long as it's not "gather this stuff and contribute it to the FC" but instead limited to "gather this stuff and show that you've done so" (where people keep everything they've gathered), then that also sounds ok.

IANAL

But as mentioned, it may just be better to go with in-game rewards. Then you don't need to worry about it. And a lot of players will prefer those anyway. OMega_ARcane's examples sound nice.

Any prizes I'd talk about those only on discord

When the question is "is this allowed?" saying "only talk about it where you can't get caught if it isn't" kind of misses the point.