I listed precedents in the form of other major competitions which impose similar, or even harsher, requirements on their participants, to explain that this is not an unusual policy for a game jam, especially one with prizes/rewards at play. Yes, everyone who submits their work to these competitions - the NESdev compo, for example - has to either allow distributing their work in this manner, or not submit their work to that specific competition. My stance is specifically that it is not uncommon or unreasonable for an event, especially in the social circles GB/GBC homebrew was born out of, to impose such expectations!
At the end of the day, many freely available GB/GBC games have already been turned into commercial products. You can do this by releasing an expanded version of the game (which has precedent), by putting the same game on a physical cartridge, or even by paywalling ROM downloads but not the web emulator (which another gbcompo entry has done). Even allalonegamez’s own 2025 entry, Zorvad, which is still available on Itch, has had a commercial release announced while still being playable online. The competition has not interfered with any of those - it only stepped in when a game which was entered in the competition was threatened with the possibility of it not being available online at all.
“Speaking of social contracts, I just think that developers shouldn’t have such a demand on the free labor of organizers and judges. If they want their game critiqued and promoted, they should pay for it.” /hj