The winner is supposedly “randomly” drawn, but with terms & conditions like these I really doubt that:
“Sponsor reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual it finds”
“Unity may use the winning developers’ name and trademarks for marketing purposes.”
So… do you really think UT gives a free copy to random beginners, someone with no portfolio, weak portfolio, with a too small team, or whose games they don’t like, when instead they could give it to a person with a larger team (making future customers), or enthusiastic Asset Store shoppers, or one with more popular portfolio they could use to market themselves?
Count me out… more chance to win for you guys. Good luck!
Yes, I think it is random. I expect disqualifications to cover things like finding someone entered multiple times with different email addresses. And the other statement is just covering themselves to make sure they can publicise the winner.
I did find a few flaws in the survey. For example, it allowed me to chose multiple options for how I use Unity (which allowed me to chose game development and education), but only one choice for how I categorise myself (both professional and educator apply). But there was nothing nefarious Ricks.
It’s not that the survey has flaws, but one can read between the lines. Let me give you an example:
They could simply connect your email from the Unity account to the email from released games (e.g. from Android store (the email is openly visible there)) and judge - depending on your background and the answers you give in the survey - if you are “worthy” or not for the license. Let’s say there is someone who works as a one-man-army and hobbyist compared to a minor team which has released small games with Unity Free and longs for a Pro version. Who would you give the single Pro license?
And that’s where the questions in the survey come in, like: “would you recommend Unity for your friends?”, “how large is your team?”, “are you hobbyist or do you make games for a living?”, etc. so they can more easily evaluate you.
Of course, that’s all jumping to conclusions and speculations - but it makes one doubt if it’s really random: they could even take a “random” probes from potential winners until they draw someone who “fits” their requirements - and still call it random. They just don’t tell you when the “random” drawing is stopped.
Indeed. You could invent all sorts of conspiracy theories, like they secretly reject anyone whose name isn’t “Eric”, but that’s all based on nothing and there’s zero evidence of anything. In fact you could say basically the same thing about every contest, everywhere. They all use the same standard legalese in the terms. There seems to be no point to this speculation except to throw around accusations that you just made up, for what purpose, exactly?
I dont think they care that much about that one license that they are giving away, to come up with such evil plan, its not like you are applying for a $500,000 donation or lottery.
There is nothing great to win in contests where you could earn a banana or a pack of sweets. But if you go farther to World Cup, Olympia etc. it happens regularly (e.g. winners who are determined in advance). Every once in a while these scandals are disclosed, even though the critical mass doesn’t care.
Many people in these forums think Unity Pro is too expensive, so obviously it has significant value. Therefore I doubt they give some random person a full Pro license. Take this line from the terms: “Unity may use the winning developers’ name and trademarks for marketing purposes.” - this confirms, that they look up information about you, they evaluate you, no matter how much you want to deny it. Point is: the survey claims a random draw of the winner, but it’s highly questionable.
Wow relax. Talk about conspiracy theories. Simple if you don’t like it, don’t try for it but to make up all these theories is weird.
I play the lottery so I can say that unless I’m old and have one foot in the grave I’m never going to win.
lol @ conspiracy, Unity gives away licenses all the time. They’ve given several copies to the unity meetup I attend and others around the country and world, they have given copies to people on social media for posting positive things about Unity, as well as other ways I’m not aware of.
Lottery and this are different systems, I’ll explain to you:
There is more work involved in gifting a free Unity Pro license. They check background information of you, your works and whatever they find about you. It’s stated in the terms&conditions. Why else would they have interest in marketing based on your works? No conspiracy theory there. Also they must check if you did tamper with website, mass accounts whatsoever to increase your winning chances. So there’s quite some work involved. It’s not that they give it out totally randomly anyways.
Now take the lottery: you can mass-send lottery notes - the lottery doesn’t care - but the amount of money to buy and fill out bazillions of lottery notes will cost you more than the money you would earn.
Then why did you come up with an example, if you knew it doesn’t fit?
Yeah, they give it away if it makes sense to them. If they have reason for it. If it fits the marketing purpose. If it helps them for exposure. Economy 1x1.
Social media is good… if you have lots of twitter followers… even better… Thanks for actually mentioning that. I could imagine they look up this information as well from the participants taking the survey. Just because they give copies away, doesn’t mean they throw it away aimlessly… random winner?
It’s just a way to get more people interested and get feedback. If there was some sort of conspiracy it would stand to hurt Unity’s reputation, it’s not worth it over a single copy of Unity Pro.
At the meetup they gave 1-2 copies the first time and 2 or 3 the second time, which were awarded by the meetup leader who simply drew names from the attendance sheet (used a random number generator to pick numbers and names were in order of who signed it), winners gave their info and unity would activate a license for them. The second time, 3 unity employees came to give talks. The marketing guy was saying connect to employees and follow them cause every now and then they give copies to people following them who are active.
