6 ms·

Betable: Bringing real gambling to social casino games

62 points by wilfra 14y ago

wilfra 14y ago
Was surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news: "Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25 investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave Morin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the Russian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name supporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue per user and average customer lifetime value for social games. Among the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington’s fund), Marc Abramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance), Auren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua Schacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps)."
- marcieoum 14y ago
  The angel investor in Zynga especially
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- joshu 14y ago
  misspelled my name again. damnit.
  - davidtyleryork 14y ago
    D'oh! We're sorry :(
T_S_ 14y ago
Can anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a "gamified" app before it is considered gambling?
- wilfra 14y ago
  These are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered gambling: -prize (they have to get paid money or something of value) -consideration (they have to pay to participate) -chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess) If any of those is missing, it is not gambling. Zynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus it is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e. clubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they have chance and a prize. Not gambling. We ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and gave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our game is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't gambling and thus was legal. Consult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist of it.
  - gregpurtell 14y ago
    I think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of chance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's what the article claims their service is
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - dminor 14y ago
      Only players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US developer could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players gambling.
      - davidtyleryork 14y ago
        That is correct dminor :)
haberdasher 14y ago
If there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha integraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email: contact@atstakegames.com
dsrguru 14y ago
Is it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S. and with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until "Black Friday" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)) that it became clear the U.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done in the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation of online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made money off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers? (I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges were.) So to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me.
- wilfra 14y ago
  "is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble?" It is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble. "would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?" This definitely would not be allowed. You mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were ancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal online gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet. "I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?" It is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling to citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could get a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a long, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and is allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical).
  - dsrguru 14y ago
    Thanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same countries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK) or would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as well. Edit: Just discovered the 50/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot of potential customers.
gamingfiend 14y ago
Have you guys been evaluated/certified by an independent testing lab?
- rcrowley 14y ago
  We're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license compels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we have the correctness and security of our systems audited independently.
  - gamingfiend 14y ago
    Can you put your audit results and/or certifications on your web site? We would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe and to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are some way to GLI-19 compliant.
    - rcrowley 14y ago
      Betable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're audited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice.

62 points by wilfra 14y ago

Was surprised not to see this on the front page. This is pretty big news: "Today, the company has received an undisclosed amount of money from 25 investors including Greylock Discovery Fund, FF Angel LLC, True Ventures, Dave Morin (ex-Facebook employee and current founder of Path) and Yuri Milner, the Russian investor who took big stakes in Facebook and Zynga. Those are big-name supporters who believe that Betable has a shot at raising the average revenue per user and average customer lifetime value for social games. Among the other investors are CrunchFund (Michael Arrington’s fund), Marc Abramowitz (first investor in Palantir), Scott Belsky (founder of Behance), Auren Hoffman (founder of Rapleaf), Sean Knapp (founder of Ooyala), Howard Lindzon (founder of Stocktwits), Matt Ocko (angel investor in Zynga), Joshua Schacter (founder of delicious), and Arjun Sethi (former CEO of Lolapps)."

marcieoum 14y ago
The angel investor in Zynga especially
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
joshu 14y ago
misspelled my name again. damnit.
- davidtyleryork 14y ago
  D'oh! We're sorry :(

T_S_ 14y ago

Can anybody explain to me how much value I can give the user in a "gamified" app before it is considered gambling?

wilfra 14y ago
These are the three criteria, all of which must be met to be considered gambling: -prize (they have to get paid money or something of value) -consideration (they have to pay to participate) -chance (so skill games are exempted i.e. chess) If any of those is missing, it is not gambling. Zynga Poker does not have a prize but they have consideration and chance, thus it is not gambling. There are legal subscription poker sites (i.e. clubwpt.com) that do not require people to pay, so no consideration - but they have chance and a prize. Not gambling. We ran a leaderboard contest last month to get some more alpha testers and gave $500 to the top 10. It was free to participate (no consideration) and our game is (we think) a game of skill, not chance. So we were confident it wasn't gambling and thus was legal. Consult your attorney before making any business decisions, but thats the gist of it.
- gregpurtell 14y ago
  I think the idea is that Betable lets you do real gambling, but for games of chance. Not sure how it works with their platform to make it legal, but that's what the article claims their service is
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - dminor 14y ago
    Only players in places where gambling is legal can participate. So a US developer could make a game using Betable's API, but it won't be US players gambling.
    - davidtyleryork 14y ago
      That is correct dminor :)

haberdasher 14y ago

If there are any Android game devs that are interested in being alpha integraters for a similar (but better?) gaming layer, please email: contact@atstakegames.com

dsrguru 14y ago

Is it definitely clear that it would be legal for a startup based in the U.S. and with American founders to use Betable? It wasn't until "Black Friday" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(2011)) that it became clear the U.S. government viewed NLH poker as a game of chance, and Googling I've done in the past suggests that certain aspects of the government's intrepretation of online poker's legality remain vague. So is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble? Or was it that those casinos made money off of their American customers? I.e. would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers? (I assume not, but then I'm unclear what the alleged money laundering charges were.) So to make a medium-length post short, I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable? If so, this is great news for me.

wilfra 14y ago
"is it a definite that what the U.S. government viewed as criminal money laundering was not that Americans were taking income from running online casinos but rather that those three casinos were allowing Americans to gamble?" It is definitely that they were allowing Americans to gamble. "would a gambling site that didn't take a rake and just ran on ad revenue be allowed to have American customers?" This definitely would not be allowed. You mentioned the money laundering charges a couple of times. Those were ancillary charges. The primary charge was that they were operating an illegal online gambling business i.e. letting Americans gamble on the internet. "I'm an American citizen. Would I definitely be allowed to use Betable?" It is not illegal for an American company to offer real money online gambling to citizens of other countries where it is legal and regulated. So Zynga could get a UK gambling license and offer online gambling to UK citizens. It is a long, slow, difficult and expensive process - Betable has already done it and is allowing others to leverage their infrastructure (legal and technical).
- dsrguru 14y ago
  Thanks! Would companies using Betable need to get licenses from the same countries that Betable already has licenses from (which so far means the UK) or would Betable's licenses mean that users of Betable would be covered as well. Edit: Just discovered the 50/50 revenue share. That's going to turn away a lot of potential customers.

gamingfiend 14y ago

Have you guys been evaluated/certified by an independent testing lab?

rcrowley 14y ago
We're audited multiple times a year. Our UK Gambling Commission license compels us to be audited against their codes of practice and additionally we have the correctness and security of our systems audited independently.
- gamingfiend 14y ago
  Can you put your audit results and/or certifications on your web site? We would like to use you but having been in the cash gaming business in Europe and to an extent in the US, we won't touch a vendor unless we know they are some way to GLI-19 compliant.
  - rcrowley 14y ago
    Betable's license number from the UK Gambling Commission http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk is 000-023328-R-307313-003. We're audited (by GLI, incidentally) against their codes of practice.