CodinGame Sponsored AI Contest Rules

A CodinGame Sponsored AI Contest (the "Contest") is an online programming competition, where software developers from all over the world can compete for fun, or to get in contact with companies they like and that are recruiting. A Contest consists in developing computer programs to solve complex problems in a limited time.

From a recruiting perspective, the aim of the Contest is to give participants (the "Participants") the opportunity to showcase their programming skills regardless of their level of education or their professional background, to get contacted by the company for which the Contest is organized and wishing to recruit a trainee, an employee on temporary or permanent contract, a self-employed worker or other and possibly be hired by this company (the "Sponsor"), taking into consideration the performance they have achieved at the Contest.

At the same time, a Contest is an opportunity for the Sponsor to be put in contact with a community of software developers in search of jobs and to recruit willing Participants who meet their expectations.

CodinGame, a simplified joint stock company with a capital of 53,545 Euros, registered with the Trade and Companies Register of Montpellier (France) under the number 750 538 613, whose headquarters are located at 396 rue du Mas de Verchant, Immeuble Archimède - 34000 Montpellier, France, organizes the Contest on behalf of the Sponsor. The Sponsor contracted with CodinGame to delegate the organization of the Contest to CodinGame.

Contests take place online on the Internet (or, in some cases, online and onsite) at dates (and locations) specified on the Contest registration page of www.codingame.com (the "Site").

Detailed information on the Contest and how to participate can be found on the dedicated registration page found on the Site.

Participants must be over 18 years old, must have an internet connection and a valid email address, must have an account on the CodinGame platform and must abide by the law of their country regarding the right to participate in a Contest that may grant prizes. Contests may be open to everyone or limited to a specific population as specified by the Sponsor. Such limitations, if they exist, will be displayed on the registration form. Limitations may be related to the Participant Country, the Participant professional status (e.g. Student vs Professional) or the Participant skills (e.g. Java expertise).

Access to the Contest is prohibited for the following people:

• Officers and employees of CodinGame or any affiliate (it controls, which controls it or under common control with it), as well as their family members (ascendants and descendants);
• Anyone who has worked or is working on developing the Contest, as well as their family members (direct ascendants and descendants).

CodinGame reserves the right to ask any Participant to justify these conditions. Any Participant who doesn't meet these conditions or specific limitations or who refuses to provide proof shall be excluded from the Contest and shall not benefit from the advantages if successful in the Contest.

By participating in a Contest, all Participants shall refrain from cheating, faking, thieving identity or any other technique to change the result of the Contest. They shall be required to participate and perform tests alone without the help of a third party or any technical assistance.

Participation in the Contest is free of charge for Participants and doesn't imply any purchase obligation.

Unless stated otherwise on the registration page, Participation is strictly personal ; each Participant may only register once for a particular Contest and may not participate in any way on behalf of third parties.
The Participants irrevocably agree that all solutions that they submit to the CodinGame platform during the Contest may be published under the GPL v3 license, and they may be made ​​available to anyone through CodinGame at the end of the Contest.

Participation in the Contests implies acceptance of these rules in their entirety. Failure to comply with these shall result in the participation being considered null and void.

Participants also state that they submit to the decisions of CodinGame for any case not provided for in these or any contentious situation.

To participate in a Contest, Participants simply need to connect to the Site using their existing CodinGame account or by creating a new account, go to the registration page, click on the button "REGISTER" and register by filling the registration form which consists of the following fields:

• email
• password
• nickname

and any additional fields as requested by the Sponsor.

To become familiar with the development platform used for the Contest, Participants can access a training page on the Site by clicking on the following link: AI GAMES.

At the date and time the Contest starts, registered Participants may enter into the Contest from the Contest registration page.

The Site provides an online development environment that allows Participants to develop a program that will compete against other players' programs. A program is referred to as an Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). Submitting an AI triggers matches between the submitter AI and the AI of other Participants. A single match involves 2, 3 or 4 AIs. After some time the submitted AI gets a rating, a rank, which depends on the number of matches won vs the number of matches lost. The rank of the submitted AI and the rank of the other Participants AIs are visible from a leaderboard and changes during the course of the Contest as other Participants submit their own AIs. Participants are identified by their Nickname in the leaderboard. Submitting is done directly online without having to resort to external programs.

Participants may choose to use their own development environment but they then must submit their program within the online development environment for the answer to be taken into account by the rating system.

Participants have an overall time to finish the Contest. This time is noted at the top of the online development environment, it counts down and ends at the same time for everyone. Within that timeframe, Participants may modify their AI and submit it as many times as they wish during the course of the Contest within reasonable limits. When a submit limit is reached, the Participant is informed of the time they have to wait before being able to submit again. These limits are in place to provide a fair and shared access to the technical resources used to rank AIs, Participants which do not abuse the system should never reach these limits.

As the number of matches that would be required to get an objective ranking would be either infinite or enormous, the rating of Participants is done as objectively as possible on the platform through an automated system which works in a way similar to the TrueSkill rating system developed by Microsoft. During the course of the Contest, when submitting an AI, the system generates a set of at least 10 matches with other Participant AIs scattered in the leaderboard. This first step gives a rough rank based on a TrueSkill like score. Then the AI will play matches against AIs with a rank close to the current AI rank (for example within a range of -10 and +10 ranks). Each match will make the AI rank evolve. At least 100 matches will be played on each submit to get a ranking as stable as possible within resonable time limits.

At the end of the Contest, once all the matches used to rank the AIs are completed, a "re-run" of the ranking is performed for the 100 highest ranked Participants to limit the negative effect of the TrueSkill system which gives more weight to the latest matches played. During the re-run, a large number of matches is played and the score of an AI used to rank is based on the average of the scores obtained after each match rather than the score obtained after the last match only. At the end of the re-run, the ranking is final.

The day following the Contest, all Participants will receive by email a link to their detailed results on the Site. The results include their rank and the source code of their lastest submitted AI.

At the end of the Contest, the ranking and source codes are made available to the Sponsor. The Sponsor may choose to contact Participants directly through the email address they used when registering to the Contest

The results are obtained by using an automated system and, although the results include a part of chance inherent to the way the ranking system works, the resulting ranking cannot be disputed nor appealed.

Without any obligation for CodinGame or the Sponsor, certain Contests may propose rewards in the form of prizes, which may be given to Participants on conditions specified by the Sponsor.

In that case, the description of the Contest on the registration page will expressly state the awarding (or not) of prizes for the considered Contest, the conditions for getting such prizes and the nature of the such prizes. Awarding is usually based on the highest rank achieved but may also be based on other criteria such as programming language used or country of origin. Awarding of a prize is neither an essential element, nor the primary purpose of a Contest.

The Participant who has won an award shall be contacted within 2 weeks after the end of the Contest by either CodinGame or the Sponsor and the prize will be sent to the address specified by the Participant at that point.

Offered prizes may not give rise to any dispute, nor delivery of their exchange value in any form whatsoever, or their replacement or exchange for any causes whatsoever, since this Contest does not constitute a promotional game.

CodinGame and Sponsor however, reserves the right to replace prizes with a prize of equal or greater value including, but without limitation, in the event of force majeure, if prizes originally planned are out of stock or in case of any other unforeseen, irresistible and external event which makes it impossible to issue the planned prizes in a timely manner. As the Contest is not registered with any ruling authorities, potential Participants are required to check with their local regulators if they are authorized to participate in a Contest which grants prizes. If not, they are forbidden to participate in the Contest.

The personal data required on the Site for participating in the Contest, such as email, name, address, etc... is collected and used in order to run a service in line with expectations, to contact Participants, manage the platform, and keep track of discussions and transactions.

This data shall be used by CodinGame in compliance with its privacy policy. This data shall be used by the Sponsor in compliance with its own privacy policy. The technical providers that may be responsible for the management of the Contest are under contract with CodinGame and are under the legal obligation to manage the data as specified by CodinGame and only for the specific operations for which they were contracted for.

The Sponsor which organizes the Contest and contracted with CodinGame for the organization of the Contest is the data controller for any data processing that the Sponsor may do on the data collected from the Participants during the Contest or at registration time. Nevertheless, in some cases, CodinGame and the Sponsor for the Contest may be joint data controllers for the processing of personal data arising from the organization of the Contest. Participants have a right to access and rectify their personal data, and with legitimate reason have the right to restrict and erase data which concern them. Participants may at any time request to exercise those rights by contacting CodinGame by email: [email protected].

Personal data will be processed in accordance with the “Informatique et Libertés” Law, n°78/17 of 6 January 1978 and “REGULATION (EU) 2016/679” of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data (GDPR). For additional information, please check CodinGame's privacy policy as well the privacy policy of the Sponsor.

Non-compliance with the provisions of one of the items listed above shall lead to disqualification from the Contest. The decision shall be made by CodinGame and the Sponsor.

Cheating is forbidden, under penalty of disqualification from the Contest. Cheating means:

• Public release of a solution
• Exploit of a flaw in the computing system
• The use or misuse of a solution
• An attempt to attack CodinGame servers
• Obfuscating code as well as creating obstacles to its reading and understanding.
• Cheating or wrongdoing observed, such as in particular being assisted by a person or a machine, participating collectively, replacing on behalf of a registered Participant

CodinGame reserves the right to make all the necessary checks regarding the Participants' identity and address.
Any indication of false identity or false address or false data entered in the registration form shall cause the Participant to be eliminated.
CodinGame may cancel the participation of any Participant who has not complied with these.
This cancellation may be made at any time without notice.

The reproduction, representation or use of all or part of the components proposed in the Contest is strictly prohibited.

All data of any kind, and in particular logos, text, graphics, video or audio clips, trademarks, software, etc., appearing on the Site are necessarily protected by copyright, trademarks and all other intellectual property rights belonging to the organizer.

The latter consents a private, non-collective and non-exclusive right on such content to the Participants.

The Participants commit under these not to reproduce, summarize, modify, alter or redistribute without the organizer's prior permission, all or any part of the contents referred to in this article.

CodinGame may in no way be held responsible for the failure of the internet network and the successful sending and receipt of mails, and the lack of postal services.

CodinGame reserves the right to shorten, extend, suspend or cancel the CodinGame Contests if so required. It shall not be held liable if an unforeseen circumstance or a case of force majeure imposed any changes whatsoever to the Contest.

CodinGame also reserves this right in case of computer viruses, external attack, fraud, technical failure, and Participants shall be unable to seek its responsibility for this.
Thus CodinGame reserves the right to sue in court those responsible for these facts.

In addition, CodinGame shall not be held liable for damages of any nature whatsoever, originating from a case of force majeure or any other external element, such as loss of revenue, data, customers, or any financial or commercial loss, any disturbance to business, lost profits or immaterial damages

Also, the responsibility would not be sought if the contract execution is delayed prevented due to a case of force majeure or unforeseeable circumstances, due to the other party or a third party or an external cause such as social conflicts, the intervention of civil or military authorities, natural disasters, fires, water damage, malfunction or interruption of the telecommunications network or power supply.

Force majeure means any event outside the affected area, of an unforeseeable, unavoidable and insurmountable nature, that prevents either party from fulfilling all or part of their obligations as stipulated by this contract.

Any connection made on an unlimited flat-rate basis (Cable, DSL ..) will not give rise to any refund.

CodinGame is subject to an obligation of means to the Participant for the Site maintenance and is therefore committed to take all necessary measures to ensure that Contests take place in the best conditions of transit time, useful debit and permanence.

However, CodinGame cannot guarantee the operation of services twenty-four hours per day and seven days a week in particular due to nature of Internet and computer and network infrastructures required to conduct the CodinGame Contest.

In all the cases mentioned, no compensation will be paid to the Participants whatever the damage suffered.

Indeed, malfunction or unavailability of the Site does not constitute a period during which the organizer does not fulfill its contractual obligations.

By entering the Contest, the Participant claims to enter valid data in the registration form.

They declare that during the CodinGame Contests they will make every effort to behave in a fair and loyal manner.

If one or more provisions of these are declared invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

All cases not covered by the Contest shall be settled by CodinGame whose decisions are final.

The law applicable to this contract is the French law.

Any dispute arising in connection with a CodinGame Contest shall be the subject of an attempt for amicable settlement.

In the absence of agreement, the dispute shall be submitted to the competent courts in the jurisdiction of the CodinGame company, unless contrary to public order.

Any dispute or claim relating to a Contest shall be made ​​in writing and sent to the registered head office.

No dispute shall be admissible later than two months after the Contest is closed.

The Rules can be consulted on the Site at the following address: www.codingame.com/legal/sponsored-ai-contest-rules.