@Nick86 long rant incoming.
Competition is fine, however it is not efficient. You do see many manga only have one group working on it, and you also do see how desperate groups announce their need for staff. Even as a hobby, sniping a project usually mean wasting the original group’s time. Scanlating doesn’t just take a couple hours for a person, it can take a long time depending on how complex the manga is. My typesetting alone usually needs 1-4 hours varying on many manga.
So, when someone snipe your series and upload the chapter first, suddenly all your effort is wasted. “It’s not wasted if you post it and readers can pick between versions” right? But imo that isn’t quite true. There’s many reasons why most scanlated manga are monopolized, and one reason I believe in is time. If someone is already doing the manga, then why wasting your time and effort of
many different people working on it? Groups don’t have the manpower most of the time to compete and work on something other people are already doing, so being competitive and just continuously upload their version is a waste of time, when they could use that time into a different manga.
It being hobby or not is not the problem here. Sniping is a pretty rude move imo either way. Even in other hobbies you don’t simply steal someone’s work in progress or their ideas just because it’s only a hobby do you? You’re wasting someone else’s time, that’s all I can see from it. People are already busy enough with life that they don’t need to see their favorite series just blatantly being taken away. When I first started out doing these scanlating stuff, I was lucky enough to be given one of my favorite manga to scanlate because I requested specifically for it and the group does have empty space for it. Maybe you can’t relate, but I was furious when I was kicked off of it not by my group but by another group -_-
Sniping is still a thing but usually it’s done when someone is doing such a bad job. You mentioned that the original group did posted the new chapter instantly after some other group did it, so that means they do have the chapter ready. Idk what their policy/decision is, but that means they did work on the new chapter and is for some reason waiting to post it. Maybe it’s their fault to hold it back, but equally I could just shoot them an email saying asking “Are you still working on this manga? If not I’ll pick it up” and that should prompt them that they’re being too slow.