Ok, I've promised you a little insight into how this contest works, but before that I need to confess - I am that guy, who made tlou2 edits and CWC stuff. No, I didn't try to "take Alex down", I just uploaded an edit of some very old meme, that I made in Paint in 10 minutes or so and couldn't stop after that. I didn't want to come out about that, since I didn't want asspats or praise. Account has no real info, was registered on a burner mail. I regret nothing - making those shitpost made feel the best I've felt in months. Hope, you'll understand.
Anyway, back on topic. Many of you may think, that troll submissions from month or two ago are all gone and accounts are banned. Well, it seems, that it's not the case. When you submit your work to the contest, it gets this badge:
And this tag:
However, jannies can take it away at any moment without any clear reasoning behind it. I mean, all of my works were obvious shitposts, but some weren't taken down ever, when other that had characters and shit were taken down regularly. But that's not the funniest part - you can just edit your work's features and submit it to the contest again! I've done it so many times that I can't even remember the exact number. Sadly, many good trolls just abandoned their accounts the second after they uploaded something and didn't reapply, so we can't surely say the exact ratio between dang dirty troll works and TRUE and HONEST fan works.
But don't think your works can't get wasted by mod team. My second submission and edited version of it got forcibly set to private mere hours after they were uploaded.
I still can't wrap my head around the reasoning behind this decision. Trolling? Well, my entire gallery there is trolling, but this happened only once. "Doesn't have YS characters"? Well, many chalice memes and just "Original OC donut steel" are still there after two months. Hell, every work by
this artist has been submitted to the contest and they are still there, despite being just a cross between anime and real people. "Edited existing work"? Hah, nice one. This website promotes this, so I don't think the problem is in originality.
But that's not even the most mind boggling thing about this contest. The way they handled "Mature content" tag on this contest is just beyond any comprehension. First, there is not a single word about blood and violence in the rules on the contest page, neither "blood is allowed" nor "blood isn't allowed", just nothing. You may think that they should've specified that, considering the graphic nature of YS, but no. Secondly, even the
guidelines for submissions are strange as fuck. There are three gradations: all ages, light sexual themes, mature content. Yep, second one doesn't have a word about blood and violence, just skin exposure and light sexual behavior. And I though that since this happened:
Yep, I've got that tag for a simple, one-colored blood without gore and gaping wounds, which made me wonder why would they agree to hold this contest in the first place. But then I'd seen this:
Are you kidding me? How is this not mature content then?! But wait, there is more:
There is even severed head in the background and a pantyshot! And that's not the only case, the contest is full of works with blood and other shit. And since users can put Mature tag on their works by themselves, it looks even more ridiculous.
Ok, it's ambiguous with blood, but it should be pretty clear with sexual themes, right? Well...
Somehow this work got shitcanned, even though the only thing that is touched there is a glass of milk and everyone is dressed. And of course it gets worse:
Not sexual.
Still not sexual.
NOT. SEXUAL.
This is literally tits with blood!
I don't fucking know anymore...
And of course that feet loving motherfucker, who I've mentioned before. Just out of curiosity, I've tried to report them and see if anything happens - nothing. Add to this, that to see works with that tag, you need to specify DOB in your account details and switch "show mature content" to yes. The problem is you don't have to do this - if one of your works has this tag, you view it and see other works with it as "related works". Basically, any child, who would get this tag for drawing a simplistic blood could then see something like that nurse with melted face. This contest is basically a bigger version of Alex's discord, where minors are exposed to all sorts of shit.
Also, there is one funny detail. Let's just say, I got into a little altercation with one user and was HEAVILY INSPIRED by her work, until one day I've noticed this.
That's right, other users can edit tags on the works that don't belong to them! You can literally destroy someone's chances to get noticed. Imagine if someone really nasty decided to fuck with Alex and his contest.
Now to the contest itself. At this moment it has 3278 submitted works, which on itself is pathetic for "A popular game that has reached over 10 million downloads worldwide!". I don't have the exact numbers, but let's say I've been posting roughly 15 pics a day in this thread for 44 days plus 50-60 posted before plus some I've saved later. It's almost 800 troll entries. A quarter or more of this contest belongs to trolls! However the rest of the contest wasn't exclusively YS art, there were OC's, some unidentified anime characters etc., so true and honest YS works may be having around 2/3 of the contest. And what's left is really, really unoriginal, it's either another edgy Ayano, Osana, that other bitch that Alex will never implement or Megumi. Someone said that Alex uses this contest to get free material for his game, well, tough luck then. Also, from the level of works it's obvious, that they were made either by remaining underage fans of YS or by artists, who tried to expand their audience, meaning that this contest brought no new fans for YS and only proved for 100th time that the majority of its fans are children.
In his contest announcement Alex said "and when people from Medibang approached me, I said "yes, please". Well, there are so many things that point out it is bullshit. Look at the
contests list. Do you notice something?
Yep, our boy Alex is listed as the sole sponsor of this shitshow and I doubt that if Medibang wanted to hold his contest so bad, they couldn't pay for it themselves, like they do with the rest of them. If that wasn't obvious, the prize is literally merch for his game (that he probably wasn't able to sell) and "your OC in my bugged beta build", when Medibang usually just gives a monetary prize.
Speaking of which, how generous is Alex, if he loves these contests so much? Let's find out! 1st place is 3 steaming pieces of merch, 2nd - two pieces, 3rd - one, other shit doesn't count since you'll get no royalties from it, only shame and regret. That means 6 pieces of merch is the prize pool. How much money is that? According to
merch shop from Alex's "Yandere Simulator Merchandise!" video, the most expensive piece is pillow case for $55 and the least expensive is a mug for $14, which means that the prize pool is somewhere in between $330 and $84... Yeah, doesn't sound very exciting, especially if you look at what Medibang pays their winners. The most recent
Flower contest has 50 000 yen x 3 winners and 10 000 yen for 5 winners, which is 200 000 yen i.e. $1813,15. Recent
My Secret society contest had 50 000 x 1 winner and 10 000 x 5, which is $725,26.
And I'm not even talking about other companies, who held their contests on Medibang.
And if it wasn't enough, Alex didn't bother to mention this contest once after the announcement!
But maybe I am wrong, maybe the mere existence of this contest reignited the interest in YS? Here are Google trends for the last 12 months. The black line is August 2020 when Osana was "released", the red one - the start of the contest. Something tells that this little spike was caused by me searching for references for my shitposts.
If you look at trends for the last 5 years, it's even sadder. The black line is June 2016, when the red one is start of the contest.
You may say "but there is a spike, so it's not a complete failure" and you would be right if not for one little thing - before that contest the wave of shit against Alex was at it's lowest since the Discord speedruns began. He wasn't forgotten, no, but people really lost their interest in fucking with him and thanks to that contest there are now hundreds of new troll memes, that would've never been made otherwise.
Alex literally spent 300 bucks just to get a ton of new chalice memes! Congratulations!