Free Real Money – Several ongoing lawsuits allege that mobile casino games, as well as games that allow players to purchase loot boxes, constitute illegal online gambling.
Lawmakers in Washington state could regulate games that encourage users to buy physical items or “loot boxes” for real money — a system critics say plays on people’s addictions. (Shaminder Dulai/)
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Suzie Kelly had no idea what she was getting herself into when she downloaded a free casino app to her phone in 2014.
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At first, Kelly said he played only lightly, using the small amount of free chips the app gave him each day to spin the digital slot machine.
But over the course of a few weeks, the Texas grandmother said she spent thousands of dollars on an app known as Big Fish Casino, buying invisible chips that she wouldn’t issue but allowed her to keep playing.
Over four years, Kelly spent more than $300,000 on digital chips that could only be used in a virtual casino app, he wrote in a recent letter to the Washington State Gaming Commission.
To fund her addiction, she drained her husband’s 401(k) retirement savings account and took out two mortgages, she told commissioners.
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Big Fish Games, the company that operates Big Fish Casino, is based in Seattle. And Kelly is now part of a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court. of the Western State of Washington where the company is involved in illegal Internet gambling. Under Washington state law, players caught in illegal gambling activities are allowed to recover the money they lost, which is the remedy Kelly and other plaintiffs are seeking.
The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit recently ruled against Big Fish Gaming, agreeing that the practices alleged in the company’s lawsuit constitute illegal gambling under Washington law. But legal action is ongoing in some parts of the case.
Users other than Kelly have filed lawsuits about how they became addicted to the app, in part because of the game’s social feature, which allows them to interact with other players.
“I was able to talk to people and they couldn’t see me crying inside,” according to a lawsuit filed by longtime player Jill Interrante, who said she first downloaded the app to help fill a void when her marriage ended. Interrante estimates he spent “at least $200,000” at the digital casino.
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In response, Washington state lawmakers are seeking new ways to regulate online operations like Big Fish Casino, as well as other types of games that entice players to make in-app purchases using real money.
State Sen. Derek Stanford (D-Bothell) plans to introduce legislation early next week that would try to stop some of the abusive practices he says were exposed in the Big Fish Casino case. Another possible defense, he said, would be to prevent the company from asking players to agree to new terms of service that would prevent them from joining a class action. That’s something Kelly’s lawyers say Big Fish did last fall.
Stanford also wants to prevent game operators from ignoring players’ requests to freeze the app or freeze their credit card accounts, requests Kelly made multiple times to get a refund from a Big Fish employee known as a “VIP host.” “
Neither Big Fish Games nor its parent company, Aristocrat Technologies, responded to requests for comment on this topic.
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Instead of complying with users’ requests to terminate their accounts, many public casino games like Big Fish Casino go in the opposite direction, Stanford said.
If someone says they want to quit, the company says, ‘That’s good.’ We have a process. It takes a few days and you have to jump. For now, here are the free credits,” Stanford said this week.
“Basically, it’s like a person saying, ‘I want to stop drinking,’ and a salesperson saying, ‘That’s great, take it for free,'” Stanford said.
Stanford said he thinks offering these types of short-term rewards is a carefully measured practice to keep people addicted to the game. He said his law will try to test this practice so they can better understand how the industry is regulated.
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A separate bill in the state House would also look at how virtual in-app purchases and in-game rewards affect players psychologically. House Bill 2839, sponsored by state Rep. Shelley Kloba, D-Kirkland, would require the state gambling commission to investigate whether in-game transactions “encourage compulsive behavior.”
The measure would require games to carry warning labels if they include in-app purchases or the ability to buy “random prizes,” sometimes called “loot boxes.” Loot boxes are physical objects filled with digital items that aid gameplay, the exact contents of which often surprise the player.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said he is very concerned about how games with loot boxes and in-app purchases are affecting young people. He said these games have an addictive force that encourages children to play more.
That’s a problem, he said, in part because research shows that too much screen time can affect children’s brain development.
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“If you’re 8 years old and you’re collecting gold and it allows you to buy a big gun, that’s a tangible benefit to a child,” Reykdal said. “It’s actually a game of chance – because the more I play, the better I get, and the further I go in the game, the more rewards I get.”
He compared these games to the candy cigarettes of decades ago, which he said companies are preparing children to buy real cigarettes when they grow up.
“I don’t want companies to simplify these games so they can move on to real gambling later on,” said Reykdal.
A lawsuit filed last year by Quinault Nation, challenged Bellevue game company Valve over the use of loot boxes in one of its games. The suit says that by selling tokens that can be used to unlock random rewards, Valve is “in effect creating an online slot machine.”
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Executives from Quinault Nation, which operates a brick-and-mortar casino on the Washington coast, did not respond to requests for comment. And Valve representatives didn’t.
State Senator Stanford said she also wants to finally address the loot boxes, which she hopes will spark a larger conversation about mobile gaming and addiction. In some cases, he said, children accumulate large amounts of money while playing online games through in-app purchases.
“If they can get a credit card from their parents or something, they can spend a lot of money without knowing it,” Stanford said.
For their part, the creators of some online casino games, which have come under fire for various lawsuits, say their products do not involve gambling at all. At a recent hearing in Olympia, some company officials said the latest legal challenges have created a cloud of uncertainty that could hurt their industry, and hurt the state’s economy.
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“All of Washington State benefits from a thriving technology sector, and the sports community is part of that sector that creates new technology and software,” said Kristina Hudson, CEO of OneRedmond. Redmond, home of Microsoft and other technology companies.
At the same hearing, executives of several gambling companies urged lawmakers to pass a measure that would ensure their products would not be classified as illegal gambling under Washington’s law that allows players to recover their losses.
“Most of our players never spend money playing our games,” said Joe Sigrist, CEO of DoubleDown Interactive, which is also the subject of the class-action lawsuit. Sigrist said his company’s games are “for fun and entertainment only.”
But opponents of the measure — House Bill 2720 — say it would unfairly change players’ ability to earn money from such games — just as Suzie Kelly is trying to do in her lawsuit against Big Fish Casino.
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“I think it’s very important to understand what these games really are: they’re not games of skill like Candy Crush or Angry Birds,” said Alex Tievsky, the attorney representing Kelly, about virtual slot machines. “…We are talking about dangerous and illegal gambling.”
“… I’m incredibly lucky that my addiction to Big Fish Casino didn’t cost me my marriage,” Kelly wrote. “But financially, we’ve lost everything and we don’t know how we’ll ever recover.”
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