Sega Suspends Sonic Birthday Contest Voting

Acknowledges “Irregularities” in Voting Patterns

TSSZ News has been all over discoveries of vote rigging in both North American and UK divisions of the Sonic Birthday Contest this week.  Today, Sega affirmed what we first reported Monday, and pulled the plug on public voting in the contest.

Voting was meant to close on Tuesday, July 27th.  Instead, the company suspended votes early, and claims responsibility for discovering the suspicious patterns as early as last Friday.

“SEGA has been monitoring the voting patterns and discovered irregularities on July 16th,” reads a statement on the Birthday Contest page.  “On review, we have confirmed the irregularities and have therefore suspended all voting.”

A further statement is expected soon and with it, we hope to hear more details on what went wrong, what Sega plans to do about it, and hopefully who is responsible.  For now, the fate of 20 finalists–and a trip to Tokyo for two of them–remains in limbo.

The next step may already be outlined in the official contest rules, which cites contest cancellation and/or winners picked arbitrarily at Sega’s discretion as an option:

If, during any period of the Promotion, for reasons beyond the Sponsor’s control (including, but not limited to, tampering or computer virus infection), the Promotion is not capable of running as originally planned, the Sponsor, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to cancel or modify the Promotion, without liability and to the extent feasible, will determine winners and award prizes among entries received prior to cancellation or modification. Sponsor is not responsible for Internet, computer hardware and software, phone, and other technical errors, malfunctions, and delays.

This marks the second time in a year and a half a Sega sponsored contest has been marred.  In 2009, a fan art contest for Sonic and the Black Knight was marred when an Italian artist plagiarized another’s work.  The error was not caught in time, and though the entrant was disqualified, the work made the cut in-game.

TSSZ News will bring you more as it becomes available.