Kongregate and Ludum Dare

So I just heard that Kongregate are holding a Ludum Dare Contest, completely separate from Ludum Dare's voting, with cash prizes for the top 3. It is NOT a sponsorship, as LD don't get paid for it, but they nonetheless are advertising it.

This gets to me for two main reasons.

1) The impact on entrant's games.

It is not hard to see how the Kong contest will impact games this LD. With the promise of prizes at the end of the tunnel, anyone swayed by the thought of money will inevitably design their game with this in mind.

Even if the amount turns out to be small, this is still something that goes against everything I assumed Ludum Dare to be about: Just Making Games. If you start to worry that your game won't do so well in the Kong Contest, the intentions behind your game are irreversibly sullied, and anything that can give that kind of impact should be avoided at all costs.

2) The sponsorship stealing.

It's pretty damn hard to articulate this argument in 140 characters, so I'll give it a good paragraph.

Submitting your game to the Kongregate Contest decreases your chance of getting a sponsorship by a huge amount. The whole point of a sponsorship is exclusivity, and you are giving that up for free, if you enter the contest. If your game is good enough to place in the contest, (and considering last LD had over 1400 entries, being in the top three wont be easy) getting $1250 for your game is downright robbery.

Kongregate are basically stealing sponsorships from (probably) most of the Ludum Dare entries made in flash, and they only have to pay 3 of them, and only a measly amount. This is exploitation, and worse, it is made under a guise of goodwill.