We feel it's important that we take time out to apologize for any confusion encountered in previous communication.

Contest rules specify the following:

(c) The Work (i) may not have been previously published or won any other prize/award

It's been brought to our attention that the interpretation of the word "published" has not been made clear. When reading these rules, many people—including deviantART staff and myself—thought this meant that the work submitted would in fact be completely unique and designed specifically for this contest.

However, in legal terms, "Published" means somebody offered it for sale to others.

I know, I know. We're not happy about it either! However, moving forward, all contests that have not yet been launched to the community, will explicitly state new rules that require submissions to be specifically designed for the project at hand.

This does mean that we will stand by the winners, which you can see detailed below. We know that some of you will not be happy about this, and we are sorry – but it's been a learning curve for us and we're confident that this will not happen again.

Again, our sincere apologies.