Scam Competitions Ruining the Scene

[wraggster]

Im sure that people who visit here visit other PSP sites and one in particular with its "premium" member (basically a scam to get poor people to cough up 3 dollars each per month to pay for news without ads and forum permissions that every other site are on for free), well this same site has teamed up with LIK SANG (who im sure did not authorise them to use the contest to con people into getting "premium" status via what is a giveaway)

heres an excerpt:

For each person you refer to the site, you get 1 point. For each person you refer to the site that becomes a Premium Member, you get 10 points! Your own forum account is also counted in the total, so if you are a Premium Member, you automatically have 10 points! For example: If you are a Premium Member you have 10 points. If you refer 20 people and 5 of them sign up for a Premium Membership, you would have a total of: 10+20+50 = 80 points.

So they are using Lik Sangs give away to make a massive amount of profit and con people into sigining up for premium memberships,

Im extremely unhappy with not only this but also the last competition which was open to "Premium members Only"

Its truely a devious way of making people part with money for a competition thats a GIVEAWAY and should be 100% free. Referring members is one thing but 10 points if you get somone to buy a premium member, well it stinks

Im sure you all have comments on this. yet again the real scene is exploited by these people.

[Sauron96]

I was part of a back & forth argument in the original thread. Too bad most of it was deleted. I'n short I agree that's it's a thinly-veiled attempt to produce A LOT of cash. But one of the mods wrote me a PM and we had a good discussion. But it's kind of B$ - in general. And yes I'm a member of SEVERAL PSP sites. Good to see different peoples ideas and how others can help. But anyway that contest is B$ - but then again you just gave a prize to one of their mods..............................

[RedKing14CA]

does this website have every psp app/emu/news available? hmm... i never thought of that...

[chronoswing]

does this website have every psp app/emu/news available? hmm... i never thought of that...

Everything but loaders. They like to hide news though for a short period of time and only post it in their premium members forum.

[consoul]

but then again you just gave a prize to one of their mods..............................

One of the winners was a mod from the dark side? Cheeky bugger. Which one? (and no, it's not me.)

[Darksaviour69]

FrozenIpaq is a pspupdates mod, but he seems like a good guy....he just got mixed up with the bad crowd

[FrozenIpaq]

This is why I dislike the PSP scene, back-stabbing. This is no scam at all. PSPU already is hosting a background contest with Liksang that is open to everyone. The Premium members are (as I've said before) donating to the site for its excellent news and forums. From donating, they also get to participate in these large competetions, although I dislike the idea of referals, they can't just giveaway the prizes. I agree that this referal contest is a bad idea (shows greedy??), but almost all sites have such contests now and then.

If they didn't include the premium members (if the person joined, you get extra points), then I think it would've been reasonable.

Argh, after reading more...I find that the scene I am involved with isn't the greatest If they did not do this contest, then I would be behind them 100%, but this just shows that they are somewhat greedy, or that they need money (which they lack some funds as of now).

EDIT: Yeah, I'm a mod over at PSPU, but no evil one I'm probably the most "liked" one The only times I actually try to argue is when someone says something completly false, like calling this contest a scam, when in fact it's just a good idea to make some money to pay for the prizes. I just like the forum scene of the site, as well as some of the news, but if others don't want the ads, they could always use the text-based version of PSPUpdates, I forget what the address is though

I'm thinking about telling them to try to lay off the self-advertising...but I don't have much power of infulence as a whole site like this site does


SO BASICALLY: Site needs money for the prizes?? Self-Advertising, that it is. I'm on the fence once again as too what the reason behind this was.. Hard call: Scam, no, self-advertising, yes. The "real" scene of PSP is not affected by PSPUpdates, as all they do is provide news and a large forum, sister sites, and giveaways, not only to premium members (donating members). Feel free to comment to me via PM to keep this forum less messy (I know that messy threads are a bad thing to have )

[Smiths]

FYI: the background contest originally said "For Premium Members Only", but apparently -- little bird says -- the company providing freebies didn't like that all-too-much.
Silently the contest became "for everyone", even though initial logs show it as Premium ONLY.

And I agree honestly; if they left out the "Premium = 10pt" thing, this would just be a stupid little "spam the hell out of our site" contest.
While stupid as hell, there's nothing "wrong" with that... besides.. well, being immature in a "community" setting and self-serving out the ass.
But the "10pt. Premium" just exposes the $$$ aspect of P$PUpdate$ again and again.

It's not enough several devs are including messages aimed at them (they post the contest on the same day as yoyo's team's little outcry... tact).

Le sigh... le boo hoo..

---
I'll edit and add this: I have reached the point where I consider the "site" of P$PUpdate$ and the forum two separate places. In fact, when the "paid admins" decide to show themselves on the forums, they end up displaying just how "out of tune" they are with the entire concept of the community and how it works. It exposes their ignorance more and more each time they post on the "separate entity" known as the forum.
It is the site that is a cancer on the community and is causing dev after dev to limit releases and/or speak out against them.
The forum is -- after all -- just another forum. Hell, apparently even I -- at some point I guess (???) -- registered there.
I dunno if I did, but Ipaq I think says I did... that's forums for ya!

And btw, the scene is great if you know who and where to get sources from and who is who.. and who is nobody.

[FrozenIpaq]

Well in all fairness, the premium member $$'s do not go into their pocket, it goes into the site, providing giveaways was the first thing the money went into. So try not to call them $$ hungry. The background contest was indeed for Premium members only, but they decided to open it to all since there are not that many premium members willing to participate in it.

Smiths, I wasn't sure if you signed up or not, there are a lot of smiths, and I thought one of them posted your new work on the forums one day, that's what might have gotten/started the confusion.

The reason why the Admins have showed up on the forums is to support it. One of them created the Ultimate Hombrew FAQ/Guide (clay), and I've only seen a few others pop up for site purposes, so they don't show up often, they are too busy working I guess.

[Shapyi]

Haha, its like those school fund raisers when you sell a bunch of chocolate for points and the person who sells the most gets a new bike. I think I grew out of this sort of thing. If people want to do PSPUpdates advertising and recruiting for free, let 'em. Maybe people will realize that the only person who benefits from this is the guy who gets the most.

I can understand why DCEmu.co.uk (probably been my favorite console scene site along with DCEmulation for about 3-4 years) frowns on this sort of thing. They are delieving free PSP news with minimal ads. While PSPUpdates is charging people to see the latest PSP news without ads. Well I don't really need a premium membership when I have Firefox + Adblock haha.

Console scenes always seem to have a lot of drama.