The May 2007 competition — a closed record, kept at its own address
This page records a competition that ran in May 2007 and closed that year. It is kept because other sites still point at this exact address, and a page that has been cited for nearly two decades should not become a dead end.
What this page is, and is not
The competition is closed. Nothing here can be entered.
In May 2007 this site ran a giveaway competition of the kind that was standard for small games sites at the time: an entry form on its own separate address, a closing date, and one prize. It closed on schedule that year.
The page is retained for one specific reason. Several independent sites linked to this address at the time, and some of those links are still live. A page that has been referenced continuously for close to twenty years is part of the record whether or not the thing it describes is still happening, and quietly redirecting it to the homepage would break every one of those references while pretending to fix something.
So it stays, at the address it always had, saying plainly that it is finished. That is the honest version of link preservation: keep the address, tell the reader the truth about what is at it.
The prize was a development tool, not a game
It was aimed at people who make games, not at people who buy them.
The surviving references to this page state what the prize was, and it is not what a games site giveaway usually offered. The winner received a copy of Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer — an authoring tool for building games, in its professional edition. Not a game, not a bundle of games, but the software somebody would use to make one.
That single fact changes who the competition was for. The independent sites that carried the announcement were development communities rather than gaming ones, which is consistent: a tool licence is worth something to a person with a half-finished project and nothing at all to a person looking for something to play this weekend. The competition was pointed at the constituency that made the games this site listed, not at the audience that downloaded them.
It is also the most useful thing this page records about the site itself. A catalogue that gives away development software is a catalogue whose operator considered the authors part of the readership, and that is borne out elsewhere: the freeware and remakes section ran on submissions from the people who made the games, and the entry form for this competition was given its own address rather than being folded into the announcement.
How competitions worked on a site like this
The mechanics were simple and are worth recording because they have completely disappeared. A studio or a tool vendor supplied a copy of something, sometimes two. The site published a form. Entrants gave a name and an email address, occasionally answering a question to prove they had read the page. A closing date passed, somebody was picked, and the supplier posted or emailed the prize directly.
No platform was involved at any stage. There was no key, no redemption code and no account. For a game sold as a demo plus a registration code, the prize was literally the code, which is why so few of these prizes still function: the code validated against a server that has not existed for years.
That is the quiet lesson of this page. The competition is not merely closed — the kind of prize it awarded has stopped being redeemable at all, which is a more complete ending than anybody involved expected.
Why these pages are worth keeping at all
A closed competition page is the clearest test of whether a site takes link preservation seriously, because there is no reader benefit in keeping it and no cost to removing it. The only argument for retaining it is that other people pointed at this address and are entitled to have their links keep resolving to something honest.
The alternative most sites choose is a redirect to the homepage. That looks tidy and is quietly destructive: it converts a specific reference into a generic one, so a reader following a twenty-year-old link about a competition arrives at a front page with no explanation and no way to tell whether they were sent to the right site at all. The reference is not preserved; it is laundered.
The approach here is applied across this archive rather than only to this page. No entry address has been changed, no extension has been modernised, and nothing has been folded into a broader page for tidiness. Where something is finished, the page says it is finished. That is the only version of link preservation that does anything for the person following the link.
Questions about the competition
Can this competition still be entered?
No. It ran in May 2007 and closed that year. This page is a record, kept at its original address because outside sites still reference it.
Why keep a closed competition page online?
Because independent sites linked to this exact address and some of those links are still live. Redirecting it would break every one of them, and the address itself is part of the record.
What was the prize?
A copy of Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer, a game-authoring tool in its professional edition. The surviving announcements on other sites state it, which is how it is established here.
Who was the competition aimed at?
People who make games rather than people who play them. The prize was development software, and the sites that carried the announcement were development communities, which points the same way.