For all y'all who don't want to read the rules for the v0lks F-100 head contest:
"VOLKS INC. owns all usage rights for the submitted design and will use it for various promotions free of charge. In addition, the production copyright (including publication and secondary copyright) shall be transferred from the applicant / creator to V0LKS INC., and the applicant / creator shall not exercise the moral rights of the author of the design."
and
"For promotional reasons, Sculpted by / commercialization, advertising / announcement, etc. without notice from the applicant / producer."
Of course, this has been google translated from Japanese, but if you want to read through the contest rules you can find them here https://dollfie.volks.co.jp/event/fcs20th/project01.html if you scroll down the page to the application requirements for the contest and click on the "click to see details" bar. It seems pretty clear to me that part of the contest rules is that v0lks becomes the sole owner of the IP that is the head design. There are a million and one art contests like this, the practice of taking ownership of the submissions is not unique to v0lks. It's up to the artists to read the details carefully and understand that they are giving away a free idea in exchange for potentially winning a prize.
To note: under this verbiage, ALL designs submitted are now v0lks IP. Even if you didn't win, even if you weren't a finalist, they can still use that design down the road. Whether you're cool with that or not is up to you as a person, but all of the contestants should have known what they were getting into. They also announced the following along with the winner:
"Heads who were not selected as No. 100 are planning to show off somewhere in the future. Please look forward to it!"
So I'm not sure where this idea that "no one knew they would make heads of the other finalists" came from.
AND ANOTHER THING! The prize for finalists listed was as 10,000 yen off a FCS order and store points. So essentially, the finalists could use that towards getting a copy of their design OR use the points towards something else entirely. Again, the contests knew this going into the competition. If they were unhappy with the prizes given, they were completely free to not enter and find other avenues to bring their designs to life.
I know these confessions are probably from some d@nny ass kisser who ran out the course of the "b-b-but v0lk is nazi word!!1!" stupidness, but misinformation spreads fast in this hobby, and I want people to be able to see what the actual rules of the competition before they start grabbing their pitchforks.
~Anonymous
