Please stop the raffles. They are growing out of hand. It would not surprise me of over $5,000 of merchandise had been put up for raffle in the FGC in the past month. This guy alone is raffling over $750 worth of stuff, and whoever wins it is likely to jut raffle everything off again. They are a bad look for the community. More importantly they’re almost certainly illegal, though raffle laws differ from state-to-state (to see if your raffle is legal in your state, ask a lawyer or consult this index of state raffle laws. hint: if you’re keeping the money, it probably isn’t legal).
In the state of California, the District Attorney is unlikely to pursue a case against illegal raffles unless they show commercial benefit, have conspicuous publicity or advertising, or there is a citizen’s complaint (see http://www.4c1lions.org/files/RaffleRules.pdf). In my mind, many of the raffles running today are both commercial and conspicious, as they’re advertised on twitter and twitch.tv week after week and the revenue is used to fund the sponsor rather than a charity. Even if you’re just one guy posting his first raffle, a simple complaint from someone may bring the office of the District Attorney down on your head.
All of us have broken the law at some point in our lives. Maybe you were speeding on your way to work this morning, or jay-walked last week, or got your older brother to buy you alcohol when you were 16. None of us are saints, but minor infractions typically ignored by authorities are always prosecuted when their magnitude grows large enough. One man jaywalking because he’s late for an appointment is not the same as a mob of 100 people blocking mid-day traffic. A few underage kids drinking in the basement is not the same as a kegger filled with high-school students. The raffle problem in the FGC is only getting bigger. Individually, none of these raffles looks that bad, but collectively they have the potential to attract a lot of attention. You are leaving a very bright digital trail of evidence in the form of tweets, facebook posts, and twitch.tv archives. I don’t want to read an article in Kotaku about someone charged with 48 counts of misdemeanor illegal raffles who pled out to a $10,000 fine and 1 year in jail. None of you are bad people or are trying to take advantage of the community, but you are breaking the law. I really don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone, so please stop.
I ignore raffles anyway, but shouldn’t the tone of this thread be more about encouraging people to be aware of the raffle laws in their state as oppose to telling people what to do?
The raffles are getting pretty out of hand. Get a job or sell your shit on Ebay. Or hell, maybe even use the product you’re given as incentive to promote it, rather than not even own a stick and bum them off of other players. If you need money that your sponsors don’t provide, then get a god damn part-time job to fill in the gaps or find a new sponsor. It’s pretty god damn ridiculous that a player can turn a $150 stick into $1500 by raffling it off.
I’ve heard stories (not naming names) of players getting free sticks, raffling them off, and then asking the company to provide more sticks. The sticks given were to last them six months or a year (don’t remember which one it was), and the company told them they couldn’t have any more free sticks. Companies give prizes (or in this case, sticks) in good faith that their products will be used by players in order to promote the product, similar to a pro athlete wearing Nike brand shoes to get consumers to buy Nike products, but a lot of the players doing raffles either don’t get that or don’t even care. Or both. Players seeing too many dollar signs in the community and too many dickriders giving them undeserved money.
Fuck raffles. Get a god damn job if you need money.
There needs to be more people with influence within the community to encourage people to stop creating and participating in raffles.
Let me be blunt: all the current FGC raffles are illegal in all states.
Raffles are tightly regulated in the same way that gambling and the lottery are regulated. Any raffle which takes money over the internet and does not award a significant amount of the revenue to charity is certainly illegal.