The Problem With Virtual Goods

The legal issues are solved by Betable (http://developers.betable.com/developers/signin). Betable already has gambling licenses which have been issued to them by the UK Gambling Commission (http://bit.ly/mSX3kN). They act as the backend to your game and handle all gambling related activity and compliance. Because the game just acts as a pass-through front end, and never handles any of the gambling activity, it is not a gambling operator, and therefore, it doesn't need a license. Instead, Betable acts as the operator and is licensed.

Betable supports virtual currency, so if you wanted to market your game to players in the US, you can create a virtual currency version of your game, market it everywhere in the world, and only expose the real-money gaming functionality to players in legal jurisdictions (e.g. those outside of the US, Turkey and Holland).

I don't think they forgot that. There is a big world outside of the US that CAN gamble and bet LEGALLY online. Using Betable (http://developers.betable.com/developers/signin), game devs can reach the massive Ex-US audience (remember, 60% of Zynga's traffic is outside of the US), and monetize them >100X better (traditional online casinos generate about $300/month per player on average) than they currently do using virtual goods, virtual currency, etc.

Now, they could piggy-back on Betable's licenses and legally offer a casino in Second Life.

Well stock exchanges offer tangible value for people who participate. The value of virtual good is limited and is basically a consumption good. Adding gambling to social games allow users to extract value from their favorite games.

Ahhh! I'm scared of the stock exchanges witch!

I don't think it's "blogspam" to educate the developer community about this opportunity. Betable is basically a hack for both the gaming and gambling industries. It hacks the gambling industry by letting new players easily enter the space to spark innovation, and it hacks the gaming industry by giving small developers a monetization channel that makes MUCH more money per player.

This is huge for game developers because they can afford to build their games faster and market more aggressively if they use real-money play vs. virtual goods. In our article, we mention that it takes a million users at an ARPU of $1 to make $1M in revenue. Many gambling games have an ARPU of $70-$100, so even if you fall in between $1 and $100 and hit, for instance, $10 ARPU, you are talking about an order of magnitude increase in your revenue per player. The flexibility that this will award game developers is awesome, and we think worthy of a post here.

Also, we believe that the best new games that will build on this will combine the best aspect of social games (as we know them) and gambling mechanics. These games will be a merger of the two: Social Gambling Games.

By the very definition of "blogspam", this is clearly NOT blogspam. Blogspam means taking material from another source and using it for a blog entry, adding little or nothing of value to the material, and then promoting your blog entry.