Nokia giving away 1500 free copies of FIFA08 for N-Gage

[krisse]

Nokia are giving away FIFA08 for N-Gage absolutely free to the first 1500 people who follow these instructions. (Make sure you enter the address in your phone web browser as n-gage.mobi/play without the www at the beginning!)

Read on in the full article.

[lovesign]

Nice touch from Nokia I'm glad I held back from buying this game straight away. Now I can spend those pennies on the Pro Series Golf game

Oh, and can you hear the distant rumble of N-Gagers who already paid for FIFA, or those from countries not covered by the promotion, slagging off Nokia and demanding some sort of compensation ???

Listen carefully...it's coming

[onutz]

Sad to say it, but it's a bad practice... My country is not listed, so if I choose any other country I got "no match between number prefix and chosen country". There are no free licenses for the rest of Europe... I wonder then why are they accepting my credit card number when I pay romanian money for their other games...?? It's just a simple guestion I would like nokia to know it's been asked.

[krisse]

Promotions like this often run into difficulties because of various countries laws on giveaways and prizes. Each country has its own set of laws on this kind of thing.

I've seen many international competitions with prizes restricted to particular countries for similar reasons.

I wonder then why are they accepting my credit card number when I pay romanian money for their other games...?? It's just a simple guestion I would like nokia to know it's been asked.

Probably because selling something is a different thing to giving it away in a competition where not everyone wins.

I think the laws on this date back to when many countries were terrified of gambling, so they put in laws to restrict how you could run a contest with prizes. Obviously this isn't really a contest, but we all know what lawyers are like...

Yup, I got one.

I did it from Firefox instead of my phone's browser as I kept on getting an error message.

[fernando20]

No free codes for the US :( Anyone care to send me one that you're not using? :P

[krisse]

Fernando, I think the codes are specific to a person's account, they're not discount codes.

[onutz]

No, it's not about the law. First, I already got some time ago a similar promotion from handango, no restriction implied. Second, it's not a local law, but an international or cu least european law that must apply here. Maybe there are some gambling restriction in my country, but I assure you I can and may gamble online on an american casino site.
And, breaking news...: opened nokia factory in romania means big money coming from romanian government.... Still, country restriction over here. No, it's not about the law, it's about some marketing assistant moron.

[onutz]

On the other hand, I disagree with you: this promotion is a time challenge competition where everyone wins, no matter why, who or how. You just have to be one of the 1500 visitors. The guide lines of the promotion are mutual, which is a flaw.

Made a mistake, there are 15.000 licenses. And there still should be some.

[krisse]

I disagree with you: this promotion is a time challenge competition where everyone wins, no matter why, who or how. You just have to be one of the 1500 visitors. The guide lines of the promotion are mutual, which is a flaw.

I agree it's not gambling, but some countries' gambling laws are very very very very very badly written. :-)

About five years ago in Greece there was a ban on video games in public places, which was because of badly-written Greek gambling laws:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2238242.stm

No money was involved, people were just playing the games in public for fun, but it was illegal.

Second, it's not a local law, but an international or cu least european law that must apply here.

There isn't actually such a thing as EU law, there are just directives which member states are supposed to turn into local law. It's these local laws that we have to obey, and they're sometimes a bit different to each other.

Even if it was EU law, most countries in the world aren't in the EU, so there might still be a problem about local laws.

First, I already got some time ago a similar promotion from handango, no restriction implied.

Maybe, but that's a much smaller company with perhaps less' nervous lawyers!

And there still should be some.

I tried to get FIFA08 about an hour ago and I got a message saying the promotion was over. Maybe other people get other messages though?

[Ratkat]

I just got it free using Safari on a mac

in the UK there are 20000 copies available as below

"*Offer limited to the first 20000 licences and no further than 30.6.2008"

visit http://play.n-gage.com/home.aspx from your PC Browser and download the n-gage client this will show you a page to download the Fifa 08 installer, download this and you will be shown a page to enter your phone number for a link to retrieve your free licence.

I already had n-gage installed so didn't need to reinstall it, all you need to do is install Fifa 08 then and only then click the licence link sent to your phone.

[krisse]

It does seem like these licences are being allocated country-by-country, and the numbers of licences seem totally different for each country.

If you're not sure if it's available in your country, give it a try, there's nothing to lose.

I did it using my web browser.

something for nothing! wow!

[krisse]

Yup, same here. Yesterday when I tried to get the code through my phone it said the offer was closed, but when I just tried it on my PC browser it worked fine.

You can install the game's demo through your phone as usual, all you need to do on the PC browser is get them to send the game activation link to your phone.