Following a few issues presented during the 2020 Contest Week and Judging Evaluations, we created a Judges' Code of Conduct to provide transparency to the public with what a Judge is and is not expected to do during the judging of entries and before, during or after the Contest Week. We hope this continues to address any concerns some may have and encourage people to submit to this year's Contest and Expo along with subsequent events.

• If a Judge feels that they can not judge entries this year, for personal or other reasons, they should inform SHC prior to commencing the judging period, to allow for a replacement Judge to be recruited in good time to allow for a full judging period for them.
• Judges are not permitted to discuss potential winners or voting statistics as this can result in influencing the voting; the results will be announced at the end of the contest week.
• Judges should not engage in any form of community drama which may implicate SHC during the SHC contest and judging period.
• Anything that happens on another website or platform is completely unrelated to SHC unless the issue seriously affects SHC as well. Leave the drama at the door. We all want a good SHC, not something ruined by the latest drama.

• Judges will only evaluate the categories they have agreed to participate in. The categories are split into Retro, 2D PC, and 3D. By splitting the Judges, this will allow all entries to be judged in the fairest of manners, compared to previous years of the Contest where all Judges took part in evaluation and allocating trophies to all entries regardless of type.
• Judges must evaluate all the entries submitted should they have the capability to do so.
  • Exception 1: If a Judge is involved in an entry, either individual in a major capacity, or as a team effort, the Judge is excused from judging and evaluating said entry.
  • Exception 2: If for whatever reason, the Judge cannot play the game, due to hardware requirement issues, if a multiplayer entry cannot be done through net play, etc.
  • Exception 3: If a Judge, for whatever reason, cannot provide an honest judging or evaluation of an entry due to issues with the contest participant in general, rather than cause drama, they may excuse themselves, within good reason. However, this exception may only be granted on the most severe of circumstances and therefore this must not be abused and must be raised and approved by other judges prior to requesting this.
• Judges may not show bias towards an entry because they do not like the base game, characters, etc.
• Judges are allowed to evaluate the entries as they see fit, they are not asked to evaluate anything a certain way, if they want to rate something out of ten or give them a five star rating, that's their call, not every judge will be the same.
• Judges accept that although their opinion on each evaluation reflects their own opinion and not SHC as a whole, what can be said ultimately can be seen as reflecting SHC as a whole.
• Judges are allowed to express an opinion on each entry as they see fit, but should avoid problematic behaviour such as derogatory and outright offensive comments, as this can bring the SHC into a negative light and can put people off from submitting again.

• Judges are permitted to assist streamers off-screen with entry setup and technical issues. Streamers however should prepare entries outside stream time, to avoid any delays. Streamers should also pay attention to the entry description and setup instructions.
• Judges may not force themselves in any way (through stream chat, direct messages, or any other way to beg for invitation) into participating on air of any Contest Week streams, or be seen as biased towards particular entries, regardless of their involvement.
• Any judge who is invited onto a stream is done so as an invitation of the streamers themselves, who may have their own participants (including non-Judges) in place.