Deliberately rigged competition?

jajaja

Hello forumites and competition lovers,

Scenario: you have evidence that a competition being run online by a reputable company was impossible (not improbable, or unlikely, but rigged to be impossible) to win

This is not the first time the competition has been run, and it is being run with a different "theme" but the same rules. The promised cash prizes are significant, and the competition is probably generating the company a lot of online traffic - online traffic for this company most likely leads to money very quickly.

There have been public postings on twitter and on the MSE forums of people claiming to win, but you know that it is indeed impossible based on what you have seen. There are therefore two options: 1) the competition is rigged to use different rules for different groups of people (it has been chosen so it is impossible for one group of players, but others are allowed to win); or 2) the posts claiming "wins" are fake and designed to get more people excited about the competition.

No hacking or illegal activities were undertaken to get access to the evidence you have.

What would you do?

Edit: please do not ask me who the retailer is, or which competition it is. At this stage I am unwilling to say. Any response or lack thereof to such a question is not to be taken by me as implicit confirmation or denial

WeAreGhosts

some 'companies' are scams in the first place. are you sure it's not one of them?

jajaja

WeAreGhosts wrote: »

some 'companies' are scams in the first place. are you sure it's not one of them?

Good question. In this scenario it is a reputable site, and even well recommended by the MSE community. The competition is being recommended by users on the MSE forums.

Original post edited to reflect this.

PeggyM37

Difficult to say without knowing what the evidence is. If it was circumstantial then it would be difficult to do anything. If the evidence was irrefutable then you would need to establish if any laws were being broken before deciding who to report it to.

mjm3346

Ask for proof from people who have claimed to win.

I have seen lots of people claim that a competition is rigged simply because they did not win a prize so I would ask to see the evidence to prove that something was rigged.

PasturesNew

There is a competitions overseer.... can't think of the name right now. Find them and report it. It's their "job" to investigate.

mjm3346

jajaja wrote: »

1) the competition is rigged to use different rules for different groups of people (it has been chosen so it is impossible for one group of players, but others are allowed to win);

Without knowing what the competition is, maybe it is one where the "winning randomness" factor is determined at the time of entry.

Moneybot

Join a forum and start a poll thread...

jajaja

Moneybot wrote: »

Join a forum and start a poll thread...

Brilliant idea.

jajaja

PeggyM37 wrote: »

Difficult to say without knowing what the evidence is. If it was circumstantial then it would be difficult to do anything.

mjm3346 wrote: »

I have seen lots of people claim that a competition is rigged simply because they did not win a prize so I would ask to see the evidence to prove that something was rigged.

mjm3346 wrote: »

Without knowing what the competition is, maybe it is one where the "winning randomness" factor is determined at the time of entry.

Very good points. The competition outcome is determined by software (javascript) code in the browser (which, would never be the case if you actually intended to pay out money to people as it is very easily for a cheating user to force it to pay out). The software code, while long and complex †, is absolute proof that it will never payout ‡

† I work with this stuff every day so it is easy enough for me to see that it will
never pay out - not a brag, just a boring fact which reflects slightly badly on how exciting I am, or am not.
‡ Unless, as I mentioned originally, it was designed to send "non-payout" code to a certain group, and "random payout" code to another group. This is very unlikely as, again, the users getting the "payout" code could still cheat. With any "win money" games, the win/lose decision is only ever decided on the server (unless designed by idiots).

Moneybot

jajaja wrote: »

Brilliant idea.

Too late been done