Lodestone: Chocobos Rule The World!!!

[mbncd]

I'm Aussie too. Wish we could figure out specifically which law(s) is/are getting in SE's way so that we could try to do something about them. Just writing to our politicians saying "rewrite all your competition laws so SE can do their thing!" won't get us very far. And, as usual, all the legalese goes over my head so I can't read the laws myself. Any lawyers playing this game who wouldn't mind doing some research for the excluded countries? It would really help!

[Catapult]

Indeed, our posts were moved to General Discussion, it seems.

Happy Australia day tomorrow

Some of us call it Invasion Day, since it marks the landing of the first British fleet rather than anything specifically patriotic, such as the date we got our independence, but I digress...

I'm Aussie too. Wish we could figure out specifically which law(s) is/are getting in SE's way so that we could try to do something about them. Just writing to our politicians saying "rewrite all your competition laws so SE can do their thing!" won't get us very far. And, as usual, all the legalese goes over my head so I can't read the laws myself. Any lawyers playing this game who wouldn't mind doing some research for the excluded countries? It would really help!

In Australia, lottery and competition law varies by state. However one thing is consistent: if a competition involves a selection by skill, and chance plays no part in the outcome (which is the case in all of SE's competitions to date), no state or territory requires you to get a permit. All that is left is to make sure that you're complying with with ACCC's guidelines on fair trade. For competitions, this involves not misleading the consumer - ie: if you say you're going to issue a prize, you actually issue it.

So then we get to competition terms and conditions, on which my knowledge is... admittedly not complete, but I'll take a stab.

If you're running a competition in Australia, you need to have a business in Australia. Most competitions include in their T&C the entity running the competition, complete with address.
While the company "Square Enix Limited" exists on the Australian Business Register (ABN: 93 464 047 509) they do not have a main business location listed, suggesting that the ABN exists solely for the purpose of business interaction with Australia from a remote location. Personally, I can't see why this would be an issue - just list the UK, JP or US office as the address of the Australian company - but there may be rules on either side of the trade boundary I'm not familiar with here.

Then we get down to the real problem. Is it worth spending the time to nut all this out including paying for legal advice to appease the minority that is Australians? If they're only going to get half a dozen entries... well, you can see where I'm going, as much as it pains me to say it. For many international video game companies, we are more of a pain to be appeased for reputation purposes than a market worth exploiting.

/sigh

One thing to SE's credit - they are letting us enter competitions when there are only digital (no physical) prizes. That is the sort of competition I'd like to see more of.

[Niqote]

Invasion Day.

Well aren't we a negative Nancy? Course we don't have an independence day...the Queen is on our coins isn't she?
At least the rest of your post was on topic and super helpful.

I would have to agree that we should have an increased amount of in game contests versus physical ones. Frankly they are more fun anyway. I'd rather see time spent on improving the in game events also, FFXI had mini games so it would be nice to get some in 2.0 as well.

[mbncd]

Indeed, our posts were moved to General Discussion, it seems.


Some of us call it Invasion Day, since it marks the landing of the first British fleet rather than anything specifically patriotic, such as the date we got our independence, but I digress...



In Australia, lottery and competition law varies by state. However one thing is consistent: if a competition involves a selection by skill, and chance plays no part in the outcome (which is the case in all of SE's competitions to date), no state or territory requires you to get a permit. All that is left is to make sure that you're complying with with ACCC's guidelines on fair trade. For competitions, this involves not misleading the consumer - ie: if you say you're going to issue a prize, you actually issue it.

So then we get to competition terms and conditions, on which my knowledge is... admittedly not complete, but I'll take a stab.

If you're running a competition in Australia, you need to have a business in Australia. Most competitions include in their T&C the entity running the competition, complete with address.
While the company "Square Enix Limited" exists on the Australian Business Register (ABN: 93 464 047 509) they do not have a main business location listed, suggesting that the ABN exists solely for the purpose of business interaction with Australia from a remote location. Personally, I can't see why this would be an issue - just list the UK, JP or US office as the address of the Australian company - but there may be rules on either side of the trade boundary I'm not familiar with here.

Then we get down to the real problem. Is it worth spending the time to nut all this out including paying for legal advice to appease the minority that is Australians? If they're only going to get half a dozen entries... well, you can see where I'm going, as much as it pains me to say it. For many international video game companies, we are more of a pain to be appeased for reputation purposes than a market worth exploiting.

/sigh

One thing to SE's credit - they are letting us enter competitions when there are only digital (no physical) prizes. That is the sort of competition I'd like to see more of.

Thank you very much for clearing so much up there!

I suppose you'd have to work for SE to assign a postal address to their ABN so nothing anyone but SE can really do about that.

The expenses of organising things for each country's legal systems would probably only be one off expenses for each country, compared to the ongoing backlash of the masses not covered by the current 7 countries (England, Spain, France, Germany, US of America, Canada and Japan, that's all of them isn't it?) which may not be so easily remedied. Making large (admittedly maybe not THE largest but still large) groups of people feel overlooked/ignored/discarded on a regular basis leads to poor word of mouth within those groups and we all know that complaints are often overstated while compliments are rarely even whispered, making this a bigger PR problem as a whole.

I'm willing to write a letter to any politician SE wants me to. I'm willing to physically sign any petition to aid their provision of any product/service on these shores. When it comes to SE just not doing their own work though, when they decide their fans here aren't worth the effort to record an address and use one of their many lawyers, that's where I just have to sigh and shake my head...

I'm not an artist. I couldn't even draw a straight line to save my life, it would come out all wobbly (probably even more so if my life really did depend on it XD ). I have no sense of style, nor a way with words, nor the wit to win most of the competitions SE offers. I'm not being a sore loser, because I would never have any hope to win such things anyway and would just be happy watching all entrants submit their amazing works and simply bathing in their beauty and magnificence.

I am however more than a little annoyed and frustrated that the many brilliant artists in the world outside of that mere handful of countries are automatically discounted. That all of their skill, ingenuity and flare for the arts that they would wish to pour into the fandom of SE's own Final Fantasy franchise is deemed inconsequential just because they don't live next door to an SE office... It's disheartening to say the least...

[3Jane]

Indeed, our posts were moved to General Discussion, it seems.


Some of us call it Invasion Day, since it marks the landing of the first British fleet rather than anything specifically patriotic, such as the date we got our independence, but I digress...



In Australia, lottery and competition law varies by state. However one thing is consistent: if a competition involves a selection by skill, and chance plays no part in the outcome (which is the case in all of SE's competitions to date), no state or territory requires you to get a permit. All that is left is to make sure that you're complying with with ACCC's guidelines on fair trade. For competitions, this involves not misleading the consumer - ie: if you say you're going to issue a prize, you actually issue it.

So then we get to competition terms and conditions, on which my knowledge is... admittedly not complete, but I'll take a stab.

If you're running a competition in Australia, you need to have a business in Australia. Most competitions include in their T&C the entity running the competition, complete with address.
While the company "Square Enix Limited" exists on the Australian Business Register (ABN: 93 464 047 509) they do not have a main business location listed, suggesting that the ABN exists solely for the purpose of business interaction with Australia from a remote location. Personally, I can't see why this would be an issue - just list the UK, JP or US office as the address of the Australian company - but there may be rules on either side of the trade boundary I'm not familiar with here.

Then we get down to the real problem. Is it worth spending the time to nut all this out including paying for legal advice to appease the minority that is Australians? If they're only going to get half a dozen entries... well, you can see where I'm going, as much as it pains me to say it. For many international video game companies, we are more of a pain to be appeased for reputation purposes than a market worth exploiting.

/sigh

One thing to SE's credit - they are letting us enter competitions when there are only digital (no physical) prizes. That is the sort of competition I'd like to see more of.

Aboriginie?