The whole contest boils down to the same thing everything they do does- making money. They were only investing in the past years and it's the same with this contest. Webtoon is trying to grow so that it will make huge amounts of money later on. Line Webtoon is so big in Korea, they want to establish the same thing in the US. They are far from there, so don't expect them to stop throwing money at creators without any financial gain on their side any time soon. They did start with ads recently, but it will take aeons until they get any earnings from this alone.
Of course this contest is meant for publicity and luring in creators, but also -and I like that point very much- to educate authors to properly format their comics to webtoon style. The vertically scrolling format is the evolution to get the best possible reading experience on mobile phones. There are several good reasons they want to push that.
Oh, and they also try to get people to stop spiltting their chapters into tiny, tiny updates by forcing the panel count. I also support that, while I do see that there are some poor folks on the receiving end like short comic strips. Okay, you can put multiple ones into a single update to get the necessary number of panels. At least you got that option.
@theyaoiarmy
While I agree that there are many webtoons worth publishing on Discover, they can only feature that many due to several factors. They'd need enough personel in the editing department, can't have too many too similar stories at the same time, need author's to be able to stick to schedules (there has been some problems and right out embarrassment in some cases), popularity doesn't equal consistency, reliability or even good work climate (you really don't want to put up with some Diva who think they are the greatest stuff in history); and the most important- not everyone who is popular/ gets asked to gets featured wants to be. There have been cases where the offer was turned down. Most of finalists in previous contests didn't get featured, although you get the chance if you place high enough. But even Discover creators refuse every now and then. Because they don't want to publish exclusively on webtoons, they don't have the time or don't want to publish weekly, they don't want to change the layout to fit webtoons preferred format etc.
@twinblades
You can publish the same comic on Tapas. Self publishing online is no problem. As long as webtoons doesn't have to battle it out with another company to get the rights to publish your story, you are good to go. Like, if your contest submission is a Premium Comic.
@Zushi
Webtoons is based in the United States. There are other departments taking care of asian territories. The one you are interested in is the one with the contest. Ignore the rest. Just make sure you do something that won't get you into trouble showing to minors in the US. While there is a parental guidance function, sensitive content is still visible to minors just a click of a button away.
I think theyaoiarmy summed it up wonderfully. Tastefully is the keyword here.
