Greetings Everyone. We would like to update you on a Modern 2D entry that was submitted to this year's Sonic Hacking Contest.

Every year, before the start of the contest, we go into each submitted entry for "Quality Control". This is to make sure said entries do not feature game-breaking bugs or contain content that break any rules outlined for the contest. Usually, this happens pretty swiftly and efficiently for each category. This year went about a little different, however.

In particular, due to various circumstances, a number of judges within the Modern 2D category did not fully partake in quality control for this year. This unfortunately resulted in a particular entry that was accidentally submitted with a version from a previous SHC passing through Quality Control and into the start of Contest Week. A "repeat submission" which, as stated in Rule 5 of the Submission Guidelines, we cannot allow, as it did not change anything from the last time it was present in the Hacking Contest.

Although we did not catch this oversight during our Quality Control period, we have collectively concluded that if we did, this entry still would not have been able to enter the contest, as the entrant was not aware of this occurrence until Day 2 of the Contest Week, well after the 72-hour grace period we give to entrants upon submitting their entry.

As a result of this, the staff team and entrant agreed the fairest thing to do was to remove the entry from participation, as to let this update pass through now would come at a massive disadvantage to those who had properly submitted their entries on time.

On behalf of all Modern 2D judges, we would like to formally apologise for not being able to catch this sooner. We'll be taking additional measures internally to make sure a scenario like this does not happen in the future.