Station Casinos opened up the first real-money gambling website in the state of Nevada today with the debut of UltimatePoker.com.

Nevada has more than its share of flashy casinos. But its newest high-stakes game will let Nevadans gamble in the comfort of their own homes. On Tuesday, Nevada became the first state where residents can legally play online poker for real money.

The state legalized online poker in February, followed by New Jersey and Delaware. The hope is that such online gambling will generate billions of dollars in revenue for both companies and local governments collecting taxes.

Michael Caselli, publisher and editor in chief of iGaming Business, said, “This is a necessary move for American Gaming. The world has gone digital and with online gaming proven a safe and reliable technology throughout the rest of the world, it was only ever a matter of time before the largest gaming operators in the world moved into the 21st century. Besides being the right technological move for the casinos, it brings convenience, innovation and better entertainment value to the consumer, making this a win-win move by Ultimate Gaming that every other terrestrial gaming group in the United States is sure to follow.”

UltimatePoker.com will operate under a 30-day license as the site works out any problems before getting a permanent license, according to a Reuters interview with A.G. Burnett, the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Other companies are following close behind, he said. So far, players have to be in the state of Nevada in order to play UltimatePoker.com.

With UltimatePoker.com, players can compete for a daily prize of $1,000 or $10,000 on Sunday. Players must be 21 years or older.

Internet gambling was banned by Congress in 2006, but the Justice Department relaxed rules in 2011, allowing states to explicitly approve online gambling on a local basis. Ultimate Gaming is headed by chief executive Tobin Prior and Tom Breitling, co-founder and chairman. Breitling came to Las Vegas in 1993 with $100 in his pocket. He set up an online reservations company and grew the business to $104 million in 1999. He sold the company in 2000 to Expedia for more than $100 million. In 2004, Breitling and his co-founder, Tim Poster, acquired the Golden Nugget hotel-casino properties for $215 million.

Their operation became the subject of the Fox TV reality show, The Casino. In 2005, Breitling and Poster sold the Golden Nugget to Landry’s Restaurants for $340 million. Breitling published his autobiography, Double or Nothing, in 2007 and worked at Wynn Resorts from 2008 to 2010.

Prior, meanwhile, was previously president of the International Gaming Division of Kerzner International.

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BuddyBet, Prague-based online gambling company, has secured $3 million in funding from private investors to propel its social-focused betting site.

The company distinguishes itself from traditional online gambling and gaming websites by allowing people to bet against other BuddyBet users instead of playing against the site itself. It emphasizes the social element of betting — something that is often lost when taking gambling from the casino to the computer.

BuddyBet focuses exclusively on sports betting, but is anticipating growth into other markets in the future.

Three types of betting are allowed on the site: direct user-to-user bets, open market bets, and external link bets that allow users to post links via their social networks to hold friends and followers to back up their trash-talking. The site offers alternative ways to cash out by giving users the opportunity to bet for BuddyBucks or simply the satisfaction of winning.

BuddyBet is the latest online betting platform to capitalize on the growing trend of online gaming. In recent months, states have passed laws to allow online gambling, with New Jersey joining Nevada and Delaware as the latest state to relax virtual betting laws.

Other sites like Betable are seeing the opportunity of turning traditional online games into actual moneymakers. Betable has seen great success in converting online gamers into online gamblers, and with regulatory standards falling both in the U.S. and abroad, it is anticipated that this growth will continue.

BuddyBet founder and CEO Jarrod Epps has a broad background in sporting and business ventures and launched BuddyBet in August 2012.

Image credit: wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

Irish predictions and betting website Intrade has shut down its service with a vague explanation concerning possible financial irregularities, the company announced Sunday.

Intrade is best-known for offering bets on real-life events such as the U.S. presidential election, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and succession the next pope. Intrade customers correctly predicted the reelection of President Barack Obama and had given Italian Archbishop Cardinal Angelo Scola the best odds of being the next pope with a 25 percent chance.

In November, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against Intrade that ordered all U.S. customers to close their accounts by the end of 2012. The complaint accused Intrade of violating several U.S. laws concerning options trading and making false statements.

Intrade’s explanation of why it shut down is quite vague. It said “circumstances recently discovered” that might include “financial irregularities” forced it to close. These issues will require a detailed investigation.

Intrade said it has shut down every member’s account and settled all open contracts “at fair market value as of the close of business on March 10.” Members who have questions for Intrade were only given a single email address [accountservices@intrade.com] for questions they had about their accounts. That seems like an insufficient solution for members considering how huge this issue is.

While the shut down appears to be massive, Intrade indicated that it will do everything in its power to “resume operations as promptly as possible.”

Read the company’s full goodbye letter below.

With sincere regret we must inform you that due to circumstances recently discovered we must immediately cease trading activity on http://www.intrade.com.

These circumstances require immediate further investigation, and may include financial irregularities which in accordance with Irish law oblige the directors to take the following actions:

Cease exchange trading on the website immediately.
Settle all open positions and calculate the settled account value of all Member accounts immediately.
Cease all banking transactions for all existing Company accounts immediately.

During the upcoming weeks, we will investigate these circumstances further and determine the necessary course of action.

To mitigate any further risk to members’ accounts, we have closed and settled all open contracts at fair market value as of the close of business on March 10, 2013, in accordance with the Terms and Conditions of our customers’ use of the website. You may view your account details and settled account balances by logging into the website.

At this time and until further notice, it is not possible to make any payments to members in accordance with their settled account balance until the investigations have concluded.

The Company will continue the maintenance and technology operations of the exchange system so that all information is preserved properly.

We are not able to provide telephone support or live help services at this time, please contact the company by email at: accountservices@intrade.com

We appreciate your custom and support over the years. We are committed to reporting faithfully the status of things as they are clarified and hope you will bear with us as we do all we can to resume operations as promptly as possible.

Sincerely,

The Board of Directors of Intrade the Prediction Market Limited

Man counting money via Tatiana Morozova/Shutterstock

The new law allows Atlantic City casinos to run websites that offer betting on games like poker, blackjack, and slots; however, only players physically in New Jersey can gamble on these sites. Industry regulators will reportedly track their locations.

The news is no doubt of interest to the social casino gaming market, which is now generating over a billion dollars a year in revenue from in-game currency sales. The market doubled in size in 2011, according to research firm SuperData, generating an estimated $1.6 billion in revenue. SuperData expects that figure to increase to $2.5 billion by 2015.

Currently, Nevada and Delaware are the only other states in the U.S. that allow online gambling. If it becomes more widespread, it could give game publishers another source of revenue.

The WSJ says that data service H2 Gambling Capital estimates online gambling in the Garden State will generate revenue of $410 million in the first year.

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Online gambling is still illegal in the United States, but the companies that support the industry overseas are preparing for it to make a return in this country.

Today, new developer Win released a free-to-play social casino game called Slots Craze for Facebook and iPhone. It doesn’t have any actual gambling elements, but Win has backing from Bwin.party, an online gambling company that runs sites like Party Poker.

“People have plenty of choices on Facebook and other platforms to enjoy the thrill of social casino games, but we feel the premium production value and compelling gameplay of Slots Craze delivers an unrivaled user experience,” Win chief executive officer Barak Rabinowitz said in a statement. “Slots Craze is our first major game to launch and marks the beginning of an ambitious product release schedule of cutting-edge entertainment developed in-house and with leading game studios around the world.”

Slots Craze is similar to a number of other online slots games, where players bet in-game credits and can purchase more, but they can’t cash out for real currency. If the U.S. legalizes online gambling, Win could quickly add real-money support into Slots Craze.

Nevada recently legalized online gambling and other states, like New Jersey, may soon follow with similar legislation.

Experts expect legal online gambling to generate billions of dollars in revenue, according to the state of Nevada.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) signed legislation that legalized online gambling inside the state of Nevada — a move that could signal a potential goldmine for developers of social casino games.

Both houses of the Nevada legislature passed the bill as an emergency measure so the could lay claim to being the first in the nation to sign such a bill into law — ahead of New Jersey. Online gambling firms pray that the Nevada law could be the start of an avalanche of legislation by tax-hungry states to legalize the industry across the country. And the video game industry’s social casino game makers hope the legalization will happen and bring a windfall to them as well.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) vetoed an online gambling bill Feb. 7, but he said he was planning on signing an amended bill next week.

Social game companies like Zynga are hoping for legalization of online gambling to help their own businesses. Social casino games — where you can buy virtual chips to make bets but you can’t cash out — are considered the “top of the funnel,” or the industry that could recruit new gamblers at very low marketing costs for the gambling companies. Indeed, while online gambling may draw about 40 million players, the number of social casino players is about 170 million.

While social casino games are generating around $1.7 billion in revenue, online gambling is a $35 billion worldwide business, according to Morgan Stanley. It is part of a larger $390.5 billion real-money gambling casino business, with the turnover of dollars reaching into trillions of dollars.

The Associated Press reported that Sandoval said it was a historic day and that the law would “usher in the next frontier of gambling in Nevada.”

Sandoval is the former head of the Nevada Gaming Commission, and he said the law was critical to the state economy. A.G. Burnett, the current chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, said the state has 20 applications from various potential online gambling operators looking for licenses.

The new law permits Nevada to authorize cross-state gambling with other states that offer Internet poker. Previously, lawmakers passed a bill that positioned Nevada to legalize online gambling if the federal government allowed it. That federal bill failed, leading Nevada to try negotiating agreements with other states.

The potential for online gambling brightened at the close of 2011, when the U.S. Department of Justice issued a letter saying that the federal Wire Act of 1961, which had previously been used to crack down on gambling on the Internet, only applies to sports betting.

Other states could benefit from partnering with Nevada because it has the most mature regulatory infrastructure, the Nevadans argued.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Casino companies and investors poured more than $2.2 billion into acquisitions of social casino games companies in the past year or so. And while investment values have sunk, the acquisitions have turned out to be good ones.

In fact, those deals have turned out so well that the social casino game boom is likely to continue as the online gambling, land-based casinos, and social casino games converge into a single industry, said Brock Pierce (pictured), the chief executive of casino game maker Playsino, at the Casual Connect Europe event.

Social casino games monetize at about twice the rate of other casual games. The only segment that generates more revenue per user is midcore games, but the numbers of social casino game players is far higher.

“The casino businesses have come to recognize that and want to know how to get in on that business,” Pierce said.

Melissa Blau (pictured right), a gambling consultant at iGaming Capital, advises land-based casinos on how to move into online gambling and social casino games. She represents around eight different casino groups. She confirmed Pierce’s assessment.

“My clients are trying to figure out their social casino gaming strategy,” she said in her own talk at Casual Connect Europe. “Social casino virtual currency games are smaller, but they are so important, the gambling industry is always looking for where they will find the next players.”

Revenues justify high-value deals

The deal values have raised eyebrows. Caesars Entertainment Casino Group bought Playtika for $180 million in 2011 and Caesars International Entertainment bought Bingo Blitz maker Buffalo Studios for an estimated $100 million in December.

Slot machine maker IGT bought Double Down Interactive for $500 million in early 2012. Double Down had just 70 employees at the time. Aristocrat bought Product Madness in November for an estimated $40 million. And last week, Scientific Games bought WMS for $1.4 billion.

Many viewed those prices as inflated. But Pierce believes they were bargains, since the revenues generated from them are impressive.

“How often do you find a market where every acquirer has done phenomenally well and is making out like a bandit,” he said. “It’s very uncommon in an M&A market where every buyer does well.”

Double Down is generated an estimated $80 million in earnings before income tax, depreciation, and amortization. That comes from about $129 million a year from revenues for Double Down Casino on Facebook. Caesars is generating about $350 million in revenue a year from the Playtika deal.

It makes sense that the deals continue to generate revenue, since games like poker are evergreen. They were popular a year ago, five years ago, or even 100 years ago.

“Most games see growth, and then you have to move on to the next hot title,” he said.

The sector could stay hot in terms of acquisitions. Potential acquirers include Electronic Arts, Gree, DeNA, Harrahs, Tencent, Universal, Zynga, MGM, Nexon, bwin.party, and Bally. That’s a diverse group of companies. Casino companies are used to paying low prices for the acquisitions, but the presence of all of the other acquirers from different industries will keep the prices higher.

Land-based casinos are “desperate for product” in the form of social casino games, Blau said.

Pierce thinks that the creativity of game developers will introduce new innovations to the somewhat staid online gambling business. Chris Griffin, chief executive of Betable, also believes that game makers will disrupt the land-based casinos and online gambling.

Categories include sports betting games, poker, slots, bingo, lottery and others. Caesars Casino is generated about $56 million in revenue a year. Best Casino is generating $34 million. Slotomania is generating $152 million a year. Lucky Slots is generating $62 million a year. And Zynga’s Texas HoldEm Poker is generating about $267 million as the No. 1 poker game on Facebook and iOS. 

Innovation is happening

Zynga’s market looked to be the most mature, where new entrants are unlikely to do well. But new entrants are already doing well, such as Fresh Deck Poker from Idle Games. Pierce credited Idle with creating an interesting new design, with a 2.5-dimensional point of view from a seat, rather than overhead. 
“It’s still early, but you’re seeing meaningful success there,” Pierce said.

Pierce said he is excited about rewards-based gaming as enabled by RockYou’s Ryzing bingo game, which incorporates sweepstakes prizes as legal rewards in its games. And Virgin Gaming is allowing players to wager on games in tournaments for core game players. King.com, Worldwinner, and GameDuell are doing similar things with betting in casual games, but you can’t cash out in territories where it is not legal.

Bingo is popular and is attracting a lot of new entrants. Sports betting apps are plentiful, but not generating much money yet on social and mobile networks. Pierce said the average lifetime value of a social casino player is $78, but the average LTV of a gambler is $1,600. Only about 2 percent of social casino players actually purchase chips.

But social is the “top of the funnel,” or the industry that could recruit the new players at very low marketing costs for the gambling companies. Indeed, while online gambling may current draw about 40 million players, the number of social casino players is about 170 million, Blau said.

While social casino games are generating around $1.7 billion in revenue, online gambling is a $35 billion worldwide business, according to Morgan Stanley. It is part of a larger $390.5 billion real-money gambling casino business, with the turnover of dollars reaching into trillions of dollars. Japan’s Pachinko game business, for instance, is a $2.2 trillion turnover business, meaning that’s how many dollars go through the system. Overall video games, meanwhile, are about $68 billion.

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Described as “Second Life meets Farmville meets Las Vegas,” Chumba World is a first-of-its-kind social casino sandbox. Players can build their own digital Bellagios, customize their avatars, and even create variations of slot machines and table games, including Blackjack, Roulette, and Video Poker. They can then host other players and share their creations, or embed them into their own websites and blogs, potentially earning real cash through a traffic-based revenue share with the Chumba platform.

In a recent email to GamesBeat, Virtual Gaming Worlds CEO and founder Laurence Escalante explained how the system works. “Players are able to make money off their casinos, yes, even on the virtual money play going through their casinos. As with all social casino games, people are able to purchase currency to play, although winnings can’t be cashed out. But as players get more traffic (friends, followers, etc.) spending virtual currency at their casinos, we are able to calculate the currency flowing through their casinos and pay them a small revenue share as real or virtual money.”

Although the MMO is nearly finished, VGW is asking for $50,000 on Kickstarter to get it over the finish line. “Though we’ve raised money from private investors here in Australia, to complete much of what we’ve done to date, a platform/MMO/casino undertaking of this size is pretty ambitious and requires a lot of resources,” said Escalante. “The Kickstarter campaign will help us with some tangible financial support to help us finish it (which is always welcome of course, being a relatively thinly funded startup in this space), and help us build community momentum.”

More importantly to Escalante, the crowdfunding campaign will allow his team to get feedback from a potential player base on what content they’d like to see in the MMO. There are currently eight games available, according to VGW, and more are in development, including Poker, Bingo, Keno, and Baccarat.

If the developer reaches its Kickstarter goal, it says it will release Chumba World within six months of the campaign’s close.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In a new twist for real-money gambling, Betable is announcing a partnership with 3Oak, a new studio funded by Canada’s Frima Studio. Under the deal, 3Oak will make gambling games out of titles that are not typically real-money gambling games.

The move is part of Betable’s campaign to break down barriers between real-money online gambling and social-mobile games. It is a disruptive strategy that could yield riches and change the status quo in two industries if Betable pulls it off as planned.

3Oak will create original titles that will incorporate gambling mechanics into the social gameplay experience. Theoretically, 3Oak could create a fantasy role-playing mobile game that has a minigame. With Betable’s technology, players could bet real money against each other to see who plays it the best. The winner could walk away with actual winnings, not just a virtual prize.

3Oak isn’t yet talking about what kinds it will make, said Mikael Lefebvre of 3Oak, which is a 15-person real-money gambling division within Quebec-based Frima, which has 300 employees. In an interview with GamesBeat, Lefebvre said, “We are not doing social casino games.”

“We are real excited about this,” said Chris Griffin, the chief executive of San Francisco-based Betable. “That has been the thesis of Betable. We make it easy for companies to go into the real-money space, leveraging creativity and know-how from nongambling games. We want to reach a much larger market with real-money gambling, and to do that, you have to do it with games that have broader appeal than casino games. We are particularly excited about Frima. They are redefining what it means to play games with real money.”

As we’ve noted in past stories on Betable, the company has a license in the United Kingdom to operate online gambling on a worldwide basis. In some territories, it will still require a separate license, and in places like the U.S., it has to wait for real-money online gambling laws to be passed by states.

Betable has created a technology to verify where a user is, and it has antifraud measures that can overcome someone who “spoofs” his Internet protocol address to fake his location. It does so by checking into a variety of records, such as credit reports, bank accounts with real addresses, and voting records. If the location is spoofed, it rejects the user for real-money gambling. But if that person passes and it is legal to gamble in his actual location, Betable permits the gambling to take place.

Here’s one of the clever tricks in dividing the gambling process: The developer creates and builds the front end of the game. Betable’s servers handle the back-end processing. Users see the front end, such as a slot machine. They bet money and play the slot machine. The game turns this information over to Betable, which then calculates the result. If the player wins, Betable credits the account. If he loses, Betable deducts money. Betable handles the payment processing by itself, said Griffin.

This makes Betable’s platform universal. Any game can be plugged into its applications programming interface and be converted into a real-money gambling game. Betable can handle all sorts, including bingo, cards, and slots. The developer simply tells Betable what type it has built, and then Betable spits out the right result. As in the partnership with Frima, Betable can also create new kinds of gambling games through custom mechanics. An example: In a horse-racing game, you could pay real money for virtual goods to raise a proper horse. Then you could enter that horse in competitions and bet real money it would win. If it does, you collect real gambling winnings.

The significance of Betable’s system is huge. As of now, no other company has both a license and the technology to help the entire social casino industry convert its titles from virtual currency games into real-money gambling games. The conversion process is painless, and companies can use Betable to stay within the constraints of territorial gambling laws. If a user with a mobile phone moves into a place where it’s legal to gamble, and then the user fires up a game, ot will ask, “Do you want to play for real money?” If the user answers “yes,” Betable executes the gambling part.

Here’s where the economics matter: Typical social-game companies make 10 cents to 20 cents on average per paying user in a month. For Zynga, about 2 percent of its users pay real money for virtual goods, and those paying users spend around a couple of bucks a month. That is why Zynga needs a massive number of players to make decent profits. But real-money gambling players spend $99 to $200 a month on poker games, according to market researcher Playtech. The lifetime value of one of these poker players is about $1,800. That’s a huge difference.

If the social casino companies can convert some of their players to real-money gambling — in the areas where it is legal — then they could make a huge windfall. Zynga is already a billion-dollar company with virtual goods revenue. If it converted to real-money gambling, its revenues could shoot upward.

Betable also has partnerships with Digital Chocolate, SGN, Slingo, Mandala Games, and Murka. Betable’s newly appointed employees include Ya-Bing Chu, Betable’s chief product officer and former vice president at Zynga; and Jonathan Flesher, the executive vice president of business development and former vice president of business development at Zynga.

3Oak is working on its own titles and partnering with third-party developers as well. Frima has worked for other publishers, including Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Activision. but it has decided to make a shift into social-gambling games under its own name through the 3Oak Studio, said LeFebvre. 3Oak’s titles will run on the web, iOS, and Android. [Update: 3Oak clarified that it is not doing social casino games now, but it may do so in the future with third-party game developers].

Griffin said that the next six months to nine months, there will be a very big movement toward real-money gambling.

“The tipping point will come when we open our platform up broadly and allow a larger pipeline of game developers,” said Griffin. “We are not saying exactly when that will happen yet. We think the effect will be like what happened when Facebook opened up its platform.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Big Fish Games has launched its first casino game in the United Kingdom that enables real-money online gambling.

The new Big Fish Casino U.K. app allows players to choose whether they want to play for fun or if they want to make a real-money wager in the slot machine title.

The game uses technology from Betable, which hopes to enable online gambling as an option for all sorts of social mobile games. Betable does the hard work of verifying who a user is and determining if that player is old enough to make real-money bets in a game. It also checks to see if the player is in the right location for legal gambling, and it executes the round to determine whether a player won or lost a bet.

The game is the first in a series of Betable-enabled games that Big Fish will launch. The title is available in the Apple App Store in the United Kingdom and runs on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

“Real-­money betting is just one more way we are enhancing the Big Fish Casino gameplay experience,” said Carey DiJulio, the general manager of Big Fish Casino. “With the launch of Big Fish Casino U.K., real‐money players in the United Kingdom can join our other Big Fish Casino players in the social aspects and thrill of casino gaming from their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch — anywhere they happen to be.”

Seattle-based Big Fish said Big Fish Casino is one of the top-grossing mobile games with more than one million monthly active players worldwide. Betable’s servers for handling the processing are based in the U.K., but Betable contends that its technology could be used by developers anywhere in the world except in countries that explicitly forbid online gambling like the U.S.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Betable has landed a big fish in its quest to offer real-money gambling as an option for social casino games. Today, the London-based company announced that Big Fish Games is working with Betable, enabling Big Fish consumers in the United Kingdom to play social casino games where they can bet and win (or lose) real money.

Big Fish Casino, which is a rebranded version of a mobile game (Card Ace: Casino) that Big Fish acquired, will have the option for real-money gambling, which could potentially generate a lot more revenue than a standard casino game.

Big Fish Casino players in the U.K. can choose an option to play with real money in the next few weeks. When they do so, Betable takes over and handles the gameplay on its servers.

Big Fish Casino is the first high-profile mobile casino game to add real-money gambling in a social game. Real-money bets will be available in casino games such as slots, blackjack, roulette, and video poker.

“We have a strong conviction that mobile apps that combine social and real-money gambling are a powerful way to engage more users and increase overall monetization,” said Paul Thelen, the founder and CEO of Big Fish.  “With its real-time social interaction features and the thrill of real-money gambling, Big Fish Casino is the closest mobile users can get to the buzz and excitement of playing these games in a real-world casino.”

“We believe that the first social gaming companies to offer real-money play will enjoy a substantial competitive advantage over those who wait, and we couldn’t be happier that Big Fish is getting a head start with Big Fish Casino,” said Christopher Griffin (pictured at top), the CEO and founder of Betable. “We have long admired Big Fish’s success and high-quality products and look forward to a long and healthy partnership.”

Big Fish Casino is available on iOS (Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) and on Android.

As we noted before, Betable believes it can break down the barriers between legal online gambling and social casino games.

Betable’s “bet” is to create all of the infrastructure, payment system, licenses, antifraud procedures, and verification needed to prove whether a given consumer can legally play an online gambling game in given location. Then it will make that platform available to developers through an applications programming interface (API) so they can embed it in their new or existing social casino games. And presto, Betable’s online gaming system will automatically be integrated into a game.

If you play an online social casino game, for instance, you’re not allowed to win real money in the game if you live in the U.S. You can pay real money for virtual currency, but you can’t win real money because you are physically in a location that does not allow it. The problem for most online casino game companies is that it is hard to verify someone’s location. As a result, most of those companies don’t try to skirt the law and simply avoid real-money online gambling altogether.

But Betable has figured out how to solve this problem. Its chief technology officer is a location expert. So the company can verify a person’s exact location. When that person plays a social casino game on the web or on a mobile phone, Betable asks them if they want to play with real money. If the person says yes, then Betable takes over and moves the game session to its servers, which are in territories where gambling is legal, such as the United Kingdom.

In the U.K., Betable has a license to operate online gambling on a worldwide basis. That’s an important detail that we’ll explain in a bit.

Betable has the technology to verify where a user is. It has antifraud technology that it can use to overcome someone who “spoofs” their Internet protocol address, or fakes their location. It does so by checking into a variety of records such as credit reports, bank accounts with real addresses, voting records, and other information. If the location is spoofed, it rejects the user for real-money gambling. But if the user passes and it is legal to gamble in their actual location, then Betable allows the gambling to take place.

Here’s one of the clever tricks in dividing the gambling process: The developer creates and builds the front end of the game. Betable’s servers handle the back-end processing. The user sees the front end, such as a slot machine. They bet money and play the slot machine. The game turns over this information to Betable, which then calculates the result of the slot machine play. If the user wins, Betable informs the game and credits their account. If the user loses, Betable deducts money from the their account. Betable handles the payment processing by itself, Griffin said.

This makes Betable’s platform universal. Any game can be plugged into its API and converted into a real-money gambling game. Betable can handle all sorts of games, including bingo, card games, and slots. The game developer simply tells Betable what type of game it has built, and then Betable spits out the right result. Betable also makes it possible to create new kinds of gambling games through custom mechanics. An example: In a horse-racing game, you could pay real money for virtual goods to raise a proper horse. Then you could enter that horse in competitions and bet real money it would win. If it does, you collect real gambling winnings.

The significance of Betable’s system is huge. As of now, no other company has both a license and the technology to help the entire social casino game industry convert its titles from virtual currency games into real-money gambling games. The conversion process is painless, and the game companies can use Betable to stay within the constraints of territorial gambling laws.

Here’s where the economics matter: Typical social game companies make 10 cents to 20 cents on average per paying user in a month. For Zynga, about 2 percent of its users pay real money for virtual goods, and those paying users spend around a couple of bucks a month. That is why Zynga needs a massive number of users to make decent profits. But real-money gambling players spend $99 to $200 a month on poker games, according to market researcher Playtech. The lifetime value of one of these poker players is about $1,800. That’s a huge difference.

If the social casino game companies can convert some of their players to real-money gambling — in the territories where it is legal — then they could make a huge windfall. Zynga is already a billion-dollar company with virtual goods revenue. If it converted to real money gambling, its revenues could shoot upward.

Social games generate around $7.3 billion in annual revenue, Playtech says, while online gambling companies generate $32 billion worldwide, and the casino industry generates $426 billion. By poking holes in the barriers between those industries, Betable enables social game companies to get access to the revenues in the much larger markets.

That’s why Zynga’s stock price rose earlier this year. That’s because there’s a chance the U.S. will legalize real-money online gambling, which has been banned here since 2006. In December, the Justice Department reinterpreted a law to allow skill-based online games, so long as states specifically allowed it. Nevada has passed a law to that effect, and Delaware is on the verge of doing the same. The promise of tax revenues from online gambling will likely spur other states to act. That means that U.S. consumers, who have a lot more money to spend than other consumers around the world, may one day be able to play real-money online gambling.

Even if online gambling is not legalized in the U.S., Betable has a big overseas market since 30 percent to 60 percent of social game players are outside of the United States.

This chance has spurred an investment frenzy in social casino game startups. IGT acquired social casino game maker Double Down Interactive, a firm with just 100 employees, in January for $500 million. Many companies are in a race to create vertically integrated gambling companies, with social casino games, real-money online gambling, and land-based casinos.

Betable itself has raised its own seed round. To date, 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.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Right now, the app is available only in the United Kingdom to players ages 18 and up, according to BBC News. Bingo Friendzy is the work of developer Gamesys, which also runs the U.K.’s top bingo and slots website, Jackpotjoy.com.

“Real-money gaming is a popular and well-regulated activity in the U.K., and we are allowing a partner to offer their games to adult users on the Facebook platform in a safe and controlled manner,” a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC.

Gamesys said players can set spending limits. The developer is also providing self-help tools to reduce the risk of gambling addiction.

Social gaming giant Zynga also plans to launch a real-money online gambling poker game sometime in 2013. That game will likely be offered overseas as well, since real-money online gambling is still illegal in the United States.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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It’s about time somebody fused the worlds of games and casinos.

Betable hopes to disrupt a hot segment of the game business by breaking down the walls that currently separate real-money online gambling and social casino games. If it works, the San Francisco startup could resuscitate the slumping social game industry and fuse it with real-money online gambling, which has a much larger market.

London-based Betable’s “bet” is to create all of the infrastructure, payment system, licenses, anti-fraud procedures, and verification needed to prove whether a given consumer can legally play an online gambling game in given location. Then it will make that platform available to developers through an applications programming interface (API) so they can embed it in their new or existing social casino games. And presto, Betable’s online gaming system will automatically be integrated into a game.

“We’ve found a way to get the social game companies into the gambling market in a way that is disruptive,” said Christopher Griff (pictured above), the chief executive and founder of Betable, in an interview with GamesBeat. “This is a tectonic shift.”

If you play an online social casino game, for instance, you’re not allowed to win real money in the game if you live in the U.S. You can pay real money for virtual currency, but you can’t win real money because you are physically in a location that does not allow it. The problem for most online casino game companies is that it is hard to verify someone’s location. As a result, most of those companies don’t try to skirt the law and simply avoid real-money online gambling altogether.

But Betable has figured out how to solve this problem. Its chief technology officer is a location expert. So the company can verify a person’s exact location. When that person plays a social casino game on the web or on a mobile phone, Betable asks them if they want to play with real money. If the person says yes, then the company takes over and moves the game session to its servers, which are in territories where gambling is legal, such as the United Kingdom.

In the U.K., Betable has a license to operate online gambling on a worldwide basis. That’s an important detail that we’ll explain in a bit.

Betable has the technology to verify where a user is. It has anti-fraud technology that it can use to overcome someone who “spoofs” their Internet protocol address, or fakes their location. It does so by checking into a variety of records such as credit reports, bank accounts with real addresses, voting records, and other information. If the location is spoofed, it rejects the user for real-money gambling. But if the user passes and it is legal to gamble in their actual location, then Betable allows the gambling to take place.

Here’s one of the clever tricks in dividing the gambling process: The developer creates and builds the front end of the game. Betable’s servers handle the back-end processing. The user sees the front end, such as a slot machine. They bet money and play the slot machine. The game turns over this information to Betable which then calculates the result of the slot machine play. If the user wins, Betable informs the game of that and credits their account. If the user loses, Betable deducts money from the their account. Betable handles the payment processing by itself, Griffin said.

This makes Betable’s platform universal. Any game can be plugged into its applications programming interface (API) and converted into a real-money gambling game. Betable can handle all sorts of games including Bingo, card games, and slots. The game developer simply tells Betable what type of game it has built, and then Betable spits out the right result. Betable also makes it possible to create new kinds of gambling games through custom mechanics. An example: In a horse-racing game, you could pay real money for virtual goods to raise a proper horse. Then you could enter that horse in competitions and bet real money it would win. If it does, you collect real gambling winnings.

The significance of Betable’s system is huge. As of now, no other company has both a license and the technology to help the entire social casino game industry convert its titles from virtual currency games into real-money gambling games. The conversion process is painless, and the game companies can use Betable to stay within the constraints of territorial gambling laws.

Here’s where the economics matter: Typical social game companies make 10 cents to 20 cents on average per paying user in a month. For Zynga, about 2 percent of its users pay real money for virtual goods, and those paying users spend around a couple of bucks a month. That is why Zynga needs a massive number of users to make decent profits. But real-money gambling players spend $99 to $200 a month on poker games, according to market researcher Playtech. The lifetime value of one of these poker players is about $1,800. That’s a huge difference.

If the social casino game companies can convert some of their players to real-money gambling — in the territories where it is legal — then they could make a huge windfall. Zynga is already a billion-dollar company with virtual goods revenue. If it converted to real money gambling, its revenues could shoot upward.

Social games generate around $7.3 billion in annual revenue, Playtech says, while online gambling companies generate $32 billion worldwide, and the casino industry generates $426 billion. By poking holes in the barriers between those industries, Betable enables social game companies to get access to the revenues in the much larger markets.

That’s why Zynga’s stock price rose earlier this year. That’s because there’s a chance the U.S. will legalize real-money online gambling, which has been banned here since 2006. In December, the Justice Department reinterpreted a law to allow skill-based online games, so long as states specifically allowed it. Nevada has passed a law to that effect, and Delaware is on the verge of doing the same. The promise of tax revenues from online gambling will likely spur other states to act. That means that U.S. consumers, who have a lot more money to spend than other consumers around the world, may one day be able to play real-money online gambling.

Even if online gambling is not legalized in the U.S., Betable has a big overseas market since 30 percent to 60 percent of social game players are outside of the United States.

“You could flip a switch and monetize this user base,” Griffin said.

This chance has spurred an investment frenzy in social casino game startups. IGT acquired social casino game maker Double Down Interactive, a firm with just 70 employees, in January for $500 million. Many companies are in a race to create vertically integrated gambling companies, with social casino games, real-money online gambling, and land-based casinos.

Betable itself has raised its own seed round. 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).

Betable is now recruiting developers to use its licensed gambling operation platform. Griffin believes that his company is bringing true innovation to the space and knocking down the barriers between social casino games and real-money online gambling. Griffin believes that the casino industry, while enormously profitable, has been stagnant and is ripe for disruption.

“This gambling industry has not had innovation for a long time,” Griffin said. “They use somebody else’s technology and they regurgitate games that have been around for 200 years. But the industry has multibillion-dollar companies.”

Part of the reason the gambling oligopoly exists is that it is hard to get gambling licenses. Betable has secured a license from the U.K. that is valid on a worldwide basis for online gambling. It took Betable two years to secure that license.

“FF Angel invested in Betable because it substantially reduces friction between businesses and gamers in a poorly structured market while maintaining high levels of compliance and accountability,” said Brian Singerman, a partner at Founders Fund, the firm that manages the FF Angel fund.

“We believe real-money gaming will make the social games industry more successful and has the potential to catapult games that offer it to the top of every app store on the planet,” said Tony Conrad, Partner at True Ventures. “While awaiting the US’ legalization of online gambling, which could take years, the overseas markets represent billions of dollars in opportunity for developers located anywhere in the world. Betable is in a great spot to help those developers participate in this emerging market.”

Betable has partnered with 30 developers in its alpha testing program, and now it will accept a number of new partners in its private beta program. Griffin will participate in a panel on the hot social casino game market at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the GamesBeat 2012 conference. Betable will also hold a hackathon in San Francisco on the weekend of July 27-29. Betable has 15 employees, including a development team in San Francisco.

If Griffin has his way, soon, hundreds of game developers could be offering real-money online gambling on web or mobile platforms to their users in a matter of months.

“We have the opportunity to shake things up,” Griffin said.

GamesBeat 2012 is VentureBeat’s fourth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. This year we’re calling on speakers from the hottest mobile, social, PC, and console companies to debate new ways to stay on pace with changing consumer tastes and platforms. Join 500+ execs, investors, analysts, entrepreneurs, and press as we explore the gaming industry’s latest trends and newest monetization opportunities. The event takes place July 10-11 in San Francisco, and you can get your tickets here.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The bill narrowly passed the required three-fifths majority. The measure heads to Gov. Jack Markell for his signature. The law is one of the first that shows a turnabout in sentiment about the legality of online gambling, and this change might prove to be interesting to companies such as Zynga that make online casino games such as Zynga Poker, where players cannot bet and win real money, for now.

In December, the Justice Department reinterpreted an online gambling law to allow skill-based gambling games played online. That prompted Nevada to allow it, and it has now led to the Delaware law. The trend could sweep across the nation and make nationwide online gambling legal at some point across the country. That would put the U.S. on part with Europe and generate a lot more tax revenue for states. Federal law limits online gambling to players within states for now.

It could also be a shot in the arm for social casino games, played with real money or with virtual currency. Markell is expected to approve the big since it could lead to the creation of a couple of thousand games. But some are concerned about the social ills that come with online gambling, such as extreme addiction. So the anti-gambling forces could still arise and stop laws in from being enacted in other states.

But the Delaware law could help bring more attention to the legalization of online gambling and that could ultimately lead to more acquisitions of social casino game companies, since land-based casinos are likely to jump into the online gambling market, both for real-money gambling and virtual currency gambling.

Even if online gambling is legalized across the nation, it won’t be a cake walk for social casino game companies, said Sherri Cuono, chief technology officer at PlayScreen, a mobile social casino game startup created in 2010. There are a lot of checks and balances that come into play when states issue licenses to real-money gambling companies. And online gambling companies have to be ready to deal with issues such as fraud.

“You have to treat people’s winnings as if it were money in the bank,” she said.

Lots of companies have moved into the market, and the world shook when slot machine maker WGT bought Double Down Casino, a social casino game developer with 70 employees, earlier this year for $500 million. Even so, Cuono believes we are just at the beginning of interest in both social casino game and real-money online gambling.

“I would put my money on real-money online gambling in 2013,” Cuono said.

[Pictured: screen shot from Playstudios' myVegas free-to-play, virtual currency game myVegas]

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Online gaming company RocketFrog is on a mission to revitalize how people play in virtual casinos. RocketFrog CEO and founder Brett Calapp thinks the social gambling market is primed for expansion, especially after the U.S. Justice Department changed its stance on its legality last December. The company is one more startup in the hot market of social casino game companies.

“The majority of online casino players are recreational,” Calapp said in a statement. “They play to have fun with their friends, blow off some steam, and are thrilled at the prospect of real prize winnings. Most have been previously limited to winning nothing more than play chips and virtual badges which works great for traditional social gaming developers but leaves both players and marketers empty handed.”

RocketFrog’s mission is to take the traditional online casino interface and offer players the chance to win real-world items alongside in-game trinkets. Players compete for a variety of prizes including movie tickets, music, and food offers and for in-game gifts and achievements.

“We’ve created social tournaments where players can interact and compete to win real prizes against their friends; not just leaderboard points or status increases,” said Calapp. “There’s no better place to do that than Facebook because that’s where your friends are at online. Who doesn’t like beating their friends and winning a prize?”

RocketFrog runs several games including poker, blackjack, and slot tournaments that accommodate  hundreds of players. Its business model focuses on using these games as integrated ad space. A new company sponsors a game each day and the prizes relate back to the advertiser. So, if Taco Bell is paying for an ad, prizes might revolve around coupons and meal offers.

RocketFrog was founded in 2010 by Brett Calapp, Matthew Osborn, and Uri Kozai. Located in Los Angeles, RocketFrog is a 16 person team dedicated to blending social networking with online gambling. Tom Anderson, co-founder and former president of MySpace, joined the company’s advisory board in effort to help RocketFrog realize its vision for fully branded social game integration.

“Advertisers are always looking for something different, something that engages users and cuts through the noise. RocketFrog delivers,” said Anderson.”The entire game experience is branded by the daily advertiser and at the same time users get to play for with real world prizes.”

Offering tangible prizes to players is how RocketFrog hopes to compete with current social gambling rivals DoubleDown Casinos and Zynga’s Texas Hold ‘em.

“RocketFrog will expand our social gaming community to include many new players who could not fathom the idea of playing for nothing, but are ecstatic about the opportunity to play for gift cards from top brands, new albums from their favorite artists, or a ticket to the movies,” said Calapp.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Ever since the Justice Department opened the door to the legalization of online gambling, the leading creators of social games are feeling increasingly lucky. PopCap Games just launched Lucky Gem Casino with a collection of seven slot machines themed after its brands such as Bejeweled and Zuma. It marks the entry of the Electronic Arts subsidiary into the increasingly active casino game market.

Leading Facebook game publisher Zynga is adding Bingo and Slingo to its Zynga Casino family, which already features the most successful Facebook Poker game with more than 30 million active monthly users. Traditional gambling companies are quickly moving into the market as well. In January, slot machine maker International Game Technology acquired Facebook casino game publisher Double Down for $500 million.

The current crop of luck-based Facebook games are legal in the US because there is no way to cash out the virtual earnings. In Lucky Gem Casino players can purchase additional coins for real money, using the Facebook Credits system. But even if they hit the jackpot, payouts occur only in virtual currency and can’t be converted back into cash.

The big prize for social game makers could arrive when more states follow Nevada’s example and legalize online gambling, a move made possible after a Justice Department ruling in December that allows online betting as long as it does not involve sports. Companies who have already gathered large player communities could see revenue boosts if social game platforms allow money payouts.

Though the initial release version is limited to slot machines, PopCap pledged “to evolve Lucky Gem Casino to enhance the experience, add more games [and] community features” — which sounds a lot like the ideas behind Zynga Casino. PopCap VP Dennis Ryan also promises they will be “enlivening traditional casino games with our franchises,” as seen in the Bejeweled Spin slot machine. All of a sudden, a Plants vs. Zombies poker table doesn’t seem quite such a far-fetched idea.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Slot machine maker International Game Technology answered that question with a resounding “Yes!” when it bought Double Down Interactive, a 70-person Facebook casino game studio, for $500 million on Jan. 13. Zynga’s shares started going up after the deal was announced, which came shortly after the Obama administration’s Justice Department ruled in December that online gambling was legal, as long as it was not sports-related, which was specifically prohibited in prior law.

The ruling reversed a long-standing position that said the 1961 federal gambling law extended to Internet gambling; now the Justice Department has given states the green light to create intrastate online gambling systems that don’t include sports betting. And states, such as Nevada, are starting to take steps to explicitly legalize online poker and possibly other games. That gives online gambling companies the right to set up poker games for players in Nevada, but the states need to create interstate agreements to allow gambling across state lines. The ball is rolling on that front, but there may be a patchwork of states for a while where online poker gambling is legal. So there is some renewed hope among the companies eyeing this market that country-wide online gambling might happen at some point in the future.

That’s one reason why Zynga’s stock is reportedly rising. Zynga has more than 30 million monthly active users for its Facebook poker game, where you can pay real money to purchase virtual poker chips. But it’s not real gambling because you can’t take your winnings out of the game. If online gambling is legalized in certain states, Zynga could allow players in those states to bet and cash out real money.

On that topic, Zynga officially says the following:

““We build games and experiences that our players want and love. Zynga Poker is the world’s largest online poker game with more than 7 million people playing every day and over 30 million each month. We know from listening to our players that there’s an interest in the real money gambling market. We’re in active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity.”

Arvind Bhatia, analyst at Sterne Agere, took note of the recent Zynga stock price increase and said he considered the legalization of online poker games across the U.S. to be a “long shot and highly speculative.” In an email, Bhatia said, “I don’t believe Zynga has any big advantages in online gaming compared to the more established players. Zynga’s (players) are gamers and not gamblers. Also, legalization of online gambling is obviously not a given and even if it happens it will probably take a while.”

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said, “I think it is highly unlikely. They don’t have the security in place to protect privacy, protect against fraud, report to regulators, and comply with federal, state and international laws. Others are already fully staffed and capable, and Zynga’s base of users doesn’t give them ownership if poker is legalized.”

Atul Bagga, analyst at Lazard Capital, said in an initial note on Zynga that online gambling was a possible expansion area for the company, but he still doesn’t see it as near-term. Long-term, he thinks the real-money online poker market in the U.S. could be a $3 billion to $5 billion market.

Zynga would face a new set of competitors like PartyGaming, PokerStars, FullTilt Poker, and Betfair. Eric Goldberg, managing director of Crossover Technologies, said, “I can’t think of a single US company that’s made a significant and successful move into gambling (including casino operations). There have been game arms of gambling companies, usually with the parent being foreign-domiciled; but the corporate DNA that the two industries produce is sufficiently foreign that the two business should not mix well.I think it more likely than not that Zynga will at least experiment with online/social gambling. (I think they’d be best served by running through out of a separate company, but that’s another discussion for another day.) At the same time, I believe any foray into online gambling has a relatively modest chance (say, 25 percent or less) of producing a material result.”

But Zynga has amassed a big audience of poker-minded people. Zynga has also earned enough trust over the past five years that it will run the game fairly and give virtual chips to those who win games. The company could make money by taking a small part of every pot, and states could generate tax revenue from that take.

But there are plenty of downsides to entering that market. Zynga would have to deal with tougher regulation of its behavior. It would also likely be forced to separate its game into two different parts, one where gambling is legal and one where it isn’t, partly because many of the players on Facebook are under-age. The company would have to redouble its efforts to combat fraud and make sure there is no cheating in the game. All of those efforts could be a distraction from company’s the basic mission, which is to make fun games.

Zynga hasn’t moved into international markets where the rules on poker games aren’t as strict. But it also has a big suite of casino games in the works, including a social version of Bingo. Zynga could build its audience of gamblers by adapting the games for real-money gambling and cross-promoting the gambling games to its known gamblers in its audience.

Online gambling could very well help Zynga with a shot in the arm for revenues. But it could also be a distraction from the core mission of making social games that entertain the world. In the age of the internet, it seems like all of the negatives around setting up a complex online poker gambling operation are surmountable. Zynga just has to decide if it purely focused on making fun games, or it wants to enter the gambling market.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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