Win a Custom Gears of War Console

**SpaceGhost2K** · 10-22-2008

Originally Posted by gameking28

Microsoft doesn't like NAFTA eh?

You would think it wouldn't be all that difficult to ship a console/game/etc. to Canada - I wonder why they have such a problem with it?

Royalties, copyright laws, trademarks etc. are all tied to a particular country. They can't do a contest in the US with all the legalities and just add another country.

Doesn't Xbox.ca do contests? They wouldn't accept US entries.

I can't go into details, but I'm working with my friend/artist/partner in crime over in Germany on a game pitch. We had to look at characters that didn't have current active copyrights. We found out that one of the characters we wanted to use was in the public domain in most of the world, but it was still under copyright in the UK until 2012. Therefore, we had no choice except to eliminate that character as an option. The alternative would have meant that if we completed the game as it was, we wouldn't be able to sell it in the UK until 2012 - OR - had we not caught it and sold the game, we could have been sued by the copyright holder for insane amounts of money.

Contests have rules because there are laws that have have to be obeyed, and those laws are different in every country. The work they'd have to go through to make sure they were following the rules in another country would probably cost more than the prizes they're giving out.

I did it with my contest because I'm an individual who secured the prize and did the shipping. And, truthfully, I assumed the risk of fallout from it. MS isn't going to assume that risk.