I don't think it's a bad deal for the designers as long as they aren't spending huge amounts of time on each idea. It's probably less effort than I spend on a proposal and I'm not guaranteed to get any work from that.
in my experience the majority of the submissions on 99designs first round are very quick drafts with clip art that probably took the designer 5 minutes. There are some very original ideas mixed in as well too but I'd say at least 75% you can tell are just rough ideas and you can look at artist profiles to see they submit basically a similar logo frequently.
I think the service is interesting because nowhere else can you just get a total brainstorm of so many ideas. Then when you pick one, they get the $350 prize, but they may also pick you up as a client to refine the logo or do more work with the site.
in my experience the majority of the submissions on 99designs first round are very quick drafts with clip art that probably took the designer 5 minutes. There are some very original ideas mixed in as well too but I'd say at least 75% you can tell are just rough ideas and you can look at artist profiles to see they submit basically a similar logo frequently.
I think the service is interesting because nowhere else can you just get a total brainstorm of so many ideas. Then when you pick one, they get the $350 prize, but they may also pick you up as a client to refine the logo or do more work with the site.