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A Hacker's guide to monetizing a free-to-play game

blog.betable.com

11–12 of 12 posts

Re: A Hacker's guide to monetizing a free-to-play game

#11
post #7

@MostAwesomeDude I think you pointed out a major issue with social games in general, which is that across the industry, free-to-pay conversion rates are only about 2% and player only generate about $1 ARPU/month, meaning, to turn your game into a viable business, you need to have a ton of players or as you put it, "...you really want as many potential wallets as possible." There are a few new monetization methods out…

> I know the knee jerk reaction is to think you can't do that without a license and that obtaining a license is nearly impossible Actually my knee jerk reaction is that it's undoubtedly illegal for US developers to offer real money gambling in their games (at least, to US players).

And you would be wrong if it weren't for your parenthetical hedge. Using Betable, it's completely legal for any developer to offer real money gambling in their games to any players who are not in the US and a few other minor jurisdictions (in terms of market size).

It's a big world out there. In fact, the market out side of the US is huge. Even Zynga has more players outside of the US than inside of the US (60% Ex-US). The opportunity to go into the Ex-US market where one can make 300X more ARPU/month than in the US is massive.

Re: A Hacker's guide to monetizing a free-to-play game

#12

Do the games have to be pure chance to be legal. I thought you couldn't mix games of skill and chance? Aren't there all kinds of quite specific laws about how odds are presented and stuff like that? How do you plan to police that stuff? I assume because you hold the licence, you are the one hosting the games and you are essentially just paying us a commission to find your players?

Oh, I just read this in the API doc.. " Because Betable’s servers are located in the UK, developers in any geographical location may build on our platform. However, due to legal restrictions, we block players from accessing Betable’s real-money play in they are located in the United States, Turkey, Holland or any other jurisdiction that Betable deems unsuitible for it’s services."
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