Deliberately rigged competition?

hannonle

Have you contacted the company with your evidence and asked them?

mjm3346

jajaja wrote: »

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).

So the default code is player loses - surely that is to be expected and if it runs in the browser that is less work on the server side.
Randomly generated "winners" could get something completely different from the default code, decided on the server side and if you have not seen it you would not know.

jajaja

mjm3346 wrote: »

Randomly generated "winners" could get something completely different from the default code, decided on the server side and if you have not seen it you would not know.

I don't disagree - that is absolutely possible. I would consider it odd, even unlikely given what I have seen, but absolutely possible.

jajaja

hannonle wrote: »

Have you contacted the company with your evidence and asked them?

No I have not. Quite honestly I'm not sure I want to do anything about this beyond posting on this forum with this poll. Of course if the poll and responses to the thread overwhelmingly persuaded me the morally correct thing to do was option X then I would feel obliged to consider doing it.

Also, having worked with (ethical) hacking (which I emphasise this wasn't, it wasn't hacking, and it absolutely categorically was not cracking) one of the concerns is always that the organisation being notified reacts badly and causes the well-meaning individual more stress than they would ever willingly go looking for. I really am not interested in having that occur.

mjm3346

If you have to register to play/log-in to an account etc then at that point it might be determined if you have lost and get the default "lose" browser game or are a potential winner and get a server based game?

jaibaby

I have an inkling of the comp you're talking about. But anyone running a comp, whether big name companies or small bloggers, need to make a list of winners available if requested. Only the IC-something (can't remember name sorry) can investigate and ensure winners are real.

hertzyabazas

jajaja wrote: »

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

Are you saying people have set up accounts on here to tell us about a win even though they've not?
Are you willing to say whether it's a major retailer or can you rate the size of their company on a scale? Say 1 - J.lewis, Debenhams - 5 - wee bob's corner shop.

Had a few beers and quite curious about this so I'll get back to this in the morning

sleepyjones

jajaja wrote: »

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.

When you say "recommended" by the MSE community, I assume you just mean that the particular competition has been posted on here before?

I know you said you wouldn't divulge which company or competition you're talking about but It might have been better to just ask "Has anyone on here ever won on the xxx xx x x x x competition?" and then move on from there.

I'm guessing it's an "instant win" daily type thing (I don't tend to enter the daily stuff so don't know many of them) ... something like the Wychwood spin the wheel thing spins to mind, but there have been winners from here on that particular comp ... and I would tend to believe that they are actually winners based on their involvement / reputation within the community.

Could it not just be that a random login request is granted a "token" or cookie or something, this token/cookie is then converted into a win on the game?

fzz33

Could it be a mistake? Like the Crabbie's comp recently where everybody won, it was an error their side.

The_3rd_Zebu

I think there are loads of rigged competitions where the winners are either fictitious or 'insiders' ( friends of the people running the competition).


One that immediately springs to mind is the Skillens Jewellers competition covered on here a while ago.


https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4376149