[ QUOTE ]
No question their randomization algorithm was [censored] up/

[/ QUOTE ]
This was a poor choice of words on my part. Did you read my second post?

Firstly let me say that this case doesn't involve their RNG or software used in gameplay. I'm 99.99% certain that's random or close enough to random that it doesn't matter.

Drawing the winner would have consisted of an employee sampling a database or writing a piece of code to pick random numbers between 1 and N(the number of players who took the survey). There are many ways this can go wrong, some of which are listed above in my second post. It's not a long shot to see how this could happen.

[ QUOTE ]
It is exactly the same as tossing a dice n times, getting a sequence of n heads in a row and then say: "this dice is clearly biased"....

[/ QUOTE ]
Not really. The difference in this case is that the results generated are exactly what's you'd expect if someone screwed up in picking the numbers. If the names went JJKKKKLLLL I'd be less inclined to believe there was a mistake, even though it's also a long shot. The result that happened in this case is very explicable in terms of another hypothesis, and even given 10,000 to one against them making such a mistake, that leaves 38,000 to 1 in favor of the mistake hypothesis. We're talking huge numbers here. Additionally, there aren't that many ways in which randomly selected names can look incredibly suspect.

[ QUOTE ]
this result won't look random, or in fact isn't random for some reason, so they "delete" it and start again. Won't you agree that there's some problematic aspect in even considering that there's something "wrong" (i.e, non-random) with the first group, if this is the practical result?

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree. However, if they can prove that the draw was flawed in some way, then they should redo it IMO. Just being a long shot with no further evidence is not enough though.

Finally, if there are an infinite number of multiverses, then in every 380 millionth one this is going to happen and someone will cry bullshit! Maybe Empire customer service just happened to be in the wrong multiverse that day. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]