I was recruited by a sports gambling company and went as far as interviewing with them. I really enjoyed the interview (interesting tech, really smart people) and I've placed a few bets along with friends before in the past without ill effect, so I did some quick checking about how gambling businesses make money. As far as I could tell, across different gambling businesses, the focus is on "whales" -- chronic gamblers who spend as much as they can or more on gambling. The public image of these "whales" is the immensely rich person who visits a casino a few weekends per year and casually loses a hundred million that they won't miss, but a lot of the "whales" are people like the ones in the article, middle class people who lose hundreds of thousands of dollars while desperately trying, and ultimately failing, to stop their addiction from ruining their lives.

Online gambling makes it profitable to pursue smaller and smaller whales, because you aren't limited by the amount of space inside your casino, or the number of people who live near or can afford to visit your casino. Your targets are everybody where you can legally operate, and you're running A/B tests and other optimization technology to increase an addictive behavior. I.e., their business model is to stoke a ruinous addiction across every social and economic class in every jurisdiction they can legally operate in.

Standard disclaimers: I'm not an expert, not an insider, not in the industry at all. Also, none of the information I learned was directly about the company I interviewed with. I'm just talking about my understanding of how gambling businesses work from what I could glean online.

Anyway, I didn't take that job.

I worked with it for a while and if I was in a position to leave that industry I would have done it sooner. But I do have to say that at least the sports betting companies I worked on they did try their hardest to follow the law as much as possible.

One thing I have to say is that it is abhorrent that betting websites are allowed to advertise at all. It should be threated the same as smoking ads regulations.

Well that absolves them now, doesn't it?

The world where the gambler stops gambling doesn't exist.

and those would shine with a "just the facts ma'am" approach.

There's a similar concept in legal contracts, with "unconscionable" terms.

There is no excuse for invading people's lives with unasked for media of any kind.

People who want to know about new products can go to places where such information is available and seek it out.

For instance: Overwatch relies on whales to purchase their excessively expensive and worthless in-game skins, and fund the business.

I did something similar with World of Warcraft, buying a level boost that I ended up not using, just to "round out my character list." It was a low point in my life and I will never go back to that behavior.

I recognize these games can be used and enjoyed responsibly, just not by me and that's okay.

Hearthstone lowered that barrier significantly, and I still consider it an excellent game, aside from the predatory/monetary trappings. I might still play it if it could be done with real magic at my dinner table with friends, for a one-time flat fee or for the caloric cost to summon all the components, assuming some reasonable magic system.

As it is now, I like playing Cribbage with my wife, and am looking forward to teaching our daughter how to play Chess, Go, Backgammon, Arimaa, and any other game that isn't packaged in a predatory wrap.

And the odds of the machine were rigged and personalized to you, which is illegal in real gambling

Now you just buy what you want.

Like you go into a store and buy a Gucci wallet. You go into the Overwatch store and buy the latest One Piece Collab.

No slot machine or anything.

Not sure if you're into buying designer stuff, but that industry is going in a similar-ish direction.

People buy a bunch of undesirable crap just so they can be put on the VIP list and maaaaybe get the opportunity to purchase the actually desirable products at a far below market price.

Not sure if Gucci themselves do this, but I know Rolex and at least one of the big handbag brands (Hermes?) operate this way.

It’s not a good fit either: A game company can terminate your account and you lose it all.

Depending on the game, but in some you also cannot resell or transfer your skins. Therefore the only thing of value is the account, but terms of service also make this a non-starter.

What’s consistent here is that the business model revolves around feeding and addiction and relying in said addicts (aka, whales).

Gambling based games like cs:go and genshin absolutely apply to what you’re saying though

Nowadays it's all servers that are only run by the developer, who could just flip a switch tomorrow and tell you "Remember that $80 you spent on Game 1 few years ago? You're gonna have to pay up again for Game 2. Also we're turning off the servers for Game 1."

"Remember that $80 you spent on Game 1 a few years ago? Well, you get Game 2 for free. Also, were turning off the servers for Game 1"

It doesn't sound as wrong but the community still hated it.

It only seems odd if all context is left out.

Blizzard's whole pitch for Overwatch 2 is that it would introduce single player and co-op PvE content. It didn't do that.

Overwatch 2 was much stingier with rewards for gameplay than Overwatch 1.

Overwatch 2 started locking new heroes behind a paywall, where they'd previously been entirely free in Overwatch 1.

Overwatch 2 charged much more for it's items, and limited specific items to bundles in an attempt to force players to spend much more than they would for the item itself.

Overwatch 2 made multiple changes to balance, that weren't always well received.

The sad thing is that people seemed fairly excited for PvE Overwatch. That excitement was strangled through a combination of hubris, corporate greed, and an inability to deliver.

Also, you mention unpopular balance patches, but "Blizzard sucks at balancing" has been a complaint since the early days of OW1 :P I remember when the first Mercy rework dropped... and the Bastion rework... and everything about Brigitte...

The missions they released have nothing in common with what was discussed. PvE was meant to have persistent hero levelling, skill trees, and a proper story. What they eventually released wasn't far off what would've been a seasonal event game mode in the past, in addition to being laughably expensive and horribly broken.

> Also, you mention unpopular balance patches, but "Blizzard sucks at balancing" has been a complaint since the early days of OW1 :P I remember when the first Mercy rework dropped... and the Bastion rework... and everything about Brigitte...

The OW2 changes went beyond a broken hero. They made fundamental changes to the way the game is played with the reduction in team size and changes to tanks.

I discovered OW1 a year before it was ended. I was addicted to this game like I haven't been since I was a teenager. I would sleep and dream of the music.. it was bad.

OW2 came out and it instantly changed things. Tanks were no longer fun to play. I haven't played a single game of OW2 in almost 10 months.

The cloest Overwatch has ever gotten to a custom map was when a (offical) OW map designer was desinging a level with his viewers on Twitch one day. Blizzard than later suprised everyone by putting it in the game for a limited time.

When I was religious I was uncomfortable with gambling and always voted to outlaw or heavily regulate it. Yet I can see folks I knew easily justifying taking such a job. The mentality was work for the heathen to win them to Jesus, and if you got really well paid then that's more you can tithe to the kingdom.

- 4% of users pay for something

- 1% of users fund the entire business

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-social-m...

And they, including Mark, actively worked against doing something about it:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/sacramento/...

And if it weren't for those bad cases, most of the gambling industry wouldn't exist. They aren't making their money from my friends flying down to Vegas and losing $50 each at the blackjack table.

Because you seem to be setting up a straw man bringing in a lot of talk about net worths in the millions, when the conversation was about losing "hundreds of thousands". The median net worth for a US family is $192k according to a recent Nerdwallet article, so it's absolutely in the realm of possibility that millions of Americans are vulnerable to losing hundreds of thousands to a gambling addiction. Certainly a lot of people would have their lives destroyed by losing $50k to a gambling addiction, and no doubt that happens plenty. Where we draw the line on what constitutes middle class doesn't really seem all that relevant to me.

Don’t forget that there’s also an entire industry looking to loan money to middle class folks.

They get access to that money by borrowing it or embezzling it. Lots of middle class people have boring jobs with access to hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars.

This is a symptom of problem gambling. The article makes it sound like this app is exploiting the same neurological reward pathways as regular gambling, and causing the same kinds of damage. The lack of monetary reward might prevent more people from trying this compared to other apps where winning money is a possibility, but exactly the same kind of people will get hooked on this version, and in the same way, and cause the same kind of damage as problem gambling for money.

But yes, I think the assumption of rational people is that the reason these practices are addicting is the money involved...when it isn't the money but a carefully designed sensory experience that (somehow) taps into addiction. If you actually look at how the slots industry works though, they largely focus on the sensory experience not the gambling side. I have used slots and they do seem to dull your other senses/captivate you whilst using them.

Just imo, I gamble myself, have done so for all of my adult life, I know many people in the industry who are fine people, the spillovers for tech have been absolutely huge (for example, a lot of the bot detection tech we have today was invented in the gambling industry)...but slots/casino should 100% be banned. I am not a banning person naturally at all but they are just awful. Any kind of tech that seeks to replicate that process (these apps, FIFA, etc.) should also be banned because it isn't about the money, gambling is nothing to do with it. Casino products add nothing and the only people who find it appealing (in my experience) are gambling addicts. I used to work in equity research and covered the big UK gambling companies...at no point did I see any evidence that casino products had anyone but gambling addicts as customers either. You can have a laugh at the horse racing with your pals, lots of people put their accumulator on every weekend and that is it, maybe put 5 on a Prem match...but casino isn't like this, it is pure cancer.

Every time I’ve sat at a slot machine, it’s not even clear if you’re winning or not, or what the rules are. It boils down to “push button, watch absurd animations and sounds.” I just find all that sensory overload irritating, so I don’t usually stay. I can see, however, that if you like that experience, it could be powerfully attractive.

It’s not at all comprehensible, imagine boilerplate TOS from a big company, with a third year statistics course mixed in. But it’s there.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37642538

There are many ways casinos try to part their visitors from the money but fraud - these days, not the past - usually isn't the driver. But psychology, greed and environment are just as effective, if not more effective at accomplishing the same goals. The best way not to lose any money in a casino is by not going there in the first place. Most people believe they are immune to the envy of thinking other people around them are winning but they'd be wrong and the whole environment there is geared to make you move into FOMO mode until you're broke.

I’m not a gambler, but out of all of the ways to lose your money in a casino the video slot machines make the least sense to me; they just don’t seem at all enjoyable win or especially lose.

its weird and I hate that the states are all in on it, I’m fine with states having casinos

but its one thing for “the house to always win” and there is a possibility of them implementing something wrong, its another thing for the state to come in and say “the house never loses” and the courts backing that up because you won at the time

But then, say you do that, the slippery slope gets more and more extreme. Like you have all these middle-eastern countries that ban alcohol, premarital sex, gambling- everything you can think of is illegal but people still need their vices. And then they lash out in dangerous and disturbing ways.

IMO the only free society is one in which people have the ability to act out vices in a controlled fashion. It’s an uncomfortable fact but real life is uncomfortable.

I'm with you most of the way, but there is a middle ground. Every system needs some friction so it doesn't become a runaway train.

Don't ban it, but don't make it so easy either.

Take porn. Before the internet, we (as kids) had to hunt for it. We had to network to find other kids whose dads had magazine stashes we could raid, or corner stores we could sneak peeks at the magazine rack of and rip pages out without getting caught. There was effort and risk involved. Obtaining it was an adventure and reward in itself. By the end of the day, you were tired-- and not always successful! It satiated some primal need for conquest, in addition to being sexually gratifying.

Now you can get to it in two clicks, and the extremity of the content stops just short of snuff. If they're being honest with themselves, nobody's really happy with the current state of porn, which leads to escalating behavior in similarly dangerous and disturbing ways. All roads lead to eventual interest in CSAM, and even that's not enough.

In a weird turn of events, porn is actually contributing to the emasculation of men. We're losing our ability to hunt because we expect everything to just be handed to us in two clicks. There's no thrill in that chase. Incest porn dominates trending pages. Wanting to fuck your mother or sister--a captive audience--is as lazy as it gets. (Cousins would be an improvement...at least you'd have to leave the house.)

Gambling is the same. It's easy to lose. The rewards are fleeting but potent. All it is is clicking a button and wasting away. You're reduced from being an apex predator to prey caught in a raccoon trap-- and held there by your own greed.

Even in a free society, nothing should be this easy. We're supposed to hunt lesser animals, not be predatory toward each other. Making vice so easy makes potential prey of us all.

What??

> In a weird turn of events, porn is actually contributing to the emasculation of men. We're losing our ability to hunt because we expect everything to just be handed to us in two clicks.

Huh??

If that's how porn affects you then I think you needed therapy, with or without the pornography.

We did ban beer. Parts of the country still have bans on beer. Almost every part of the country has bans on certain types of beer, or certain behavior by beer makers, distributors, and sellers.

The reason beer is broadly legal is not because it was illegal to ban it, but because the ban was unpopular and got reverted.

We could do the same for gambling or anything else for that matter. There is no fundamental right to make money as you see fit in the United States.

You could go to your wife and explain that you've spent the rent money on buying Smurfcoins to gamble on some lootbox lottery, but you can't go and tell her you've spent it on paying women to push squirrels up your bottom.

The "play-for-fun" casinos successfully utilize the onboarding process to attract, and even create, the people most likely to be exploited by these games. Real-money, online casinos require a real-money deposit to get started, therefore, few people download the apps to begin with without being at least a somewhat-experienced brick-and-mortar casino gambler who is prepared to deposit real money.

Play-for-fun attracts casuals looking for the next Candy Crush or Bejeweled and might get a week of play (grooming, essentially) before even being asked for an in-game purchase. Further, specifically because play-for-fun is NOT gambling, they are unregulated and have no requirement to be fair or random. The developers can insert all kinds of manipulations and scripted outcomes that encourage more play and more importantly, more real-money purchases. They can amplify the payouts over time so initially, a few thousand coins is exciting, then tens of thousands, then millions. The coin purchases get more expensive as the player requires higher amounts to maintain their levels.

Lastly, it isn't like real online casinos aren't addicting or potentially problematic. Through 9 months of 2023, New Jersey online casinos have generated $1.41 billion, 65% of the brick-and-mortar casino revenue ($2.17 billion). And since online casinos and sports betting are growing much faster, they will likely surpass b-and-m a few years from now. Basically, New Jersey has created an army of addicts in a single decade, and many other states are following suit.

https://www.nj.gov/oag/ge/docs/Financials/PressRelease2023/S...

Why do we care so much about this specific form of people wasting their money? What’s wrong with letting people go broke the way they choose?

The good itself is produced by employees, has material inputs from suppliers, contributes to the economy in other ways.

I would say the problem isn't that it's a "waste", it's that the way it is sold is practically fraud. If the game was presented authentically as "pay $100 to click a button 100 times and watch some animations" then I don't really think it would be very addicting.

Why do you think people only care about this specific form? It's definitely one of the most discussed forms but I'd think that's mainly because it's a relatively novel medium.

I feel much the same way about betting shops, luxury brands, etc. as I do these "games". Luxury brands are often particularly detestable. It has become almost impossible to determine whether you're paying for a good quality product or just burning money. Even when of good quality, brands often go far beyond what could be considered moral. Hermes springs to mind in particular, convincing people to debase themselves in the hopes of being offered the chance to purchase an overpriced bag.

In France for instance, only certified operators are legally allowed to run online money games (https://www.economie.gouv.fr/cedef/jeux-et-paris-ligne).

It is just as dangerous as « regular gambling ».

For me it means the money bag is no longer on the table -- not because we removed it or invested it in something better, but because we gave it to the politicians' best buddies.

Edit:

I don't know French so I might miss some nuances. There are some kinds of regulation that I consider positive, for example to put a certain % of the casino's operating cash in a trust funding account (or buy insurance plans) so if they were found fraudulous, at least the victims would get compensated. But I don't know if France does this.

I would suggest, for instance, that someone about to bet more than 99% of people must have a chat with an official who verifies that they know they're addicted and present options for rehab.

How would you calculate this? By total bet volume alone? A very wealthy person can safely gamble more than a less wealthy one and might reasonably be gambling without being addicted despite having been flagged by this simple algorithm.

Then that very wealthy person talks to an official who verifies they can afford to bet that much.

What if someone has been betting frequently, but they've been winning so far? They'll be deemed "addicted" by this algorithm. Should they be?

How much will it cost to administer this program?

How confident are you that it will improve outcomes?

Why should I be required to share details of my finances in order to play?

Legal gambling has issues but I would definitely vote against your proposal. Keep regulations simple, either allow the activity or don't.

It's not worthwhile to try to duct tape over side effects with mitigation programs of questionable impact that will inevitably be expensive to administer, all while arbitrarily invading peoples' privacy.

I think there aren't many sane people without vested interest who answer yes to the question.

The solution of only running state lotteries at least ensures there won't be much optimisation and the money goes to the public fund. What not to like?

And you propose to make gov't to get an interest in exploting addicts. Which is questionable

People are more complex than that, don't do the correlation vs causation mistake.

But no -- this is something I'd never heard of. These are apps where you can't withdraw winnings.

People are spending $100,000's with zero potential reward.

I'm... baffled.

Although now I guess I'm forced to ask myself, how is this any different from other free-to-play games like virtual multiplayer golf or Mario Kart or whatever that some people have spent $10,000's for equipment/upgrades/cosmetics/etc., that similarly don't equate to anything in the real world.

I am not sure why slots work but gatchas are fun in moderation. I personally try to avoid them though and only consume them very rarely.

"It's so pure I think I'm going to cry."

Paid upgrades/equipment/unlocks that give advantage to a player in a otherwise free to play game is a shitty spending-fest design that I avoid getting into, maybe unless the spending ceiling is very low. Still, I wouldn't see it as a gambling because there is no randomness involved.

The moment game devs add loot boxes though - well, IMO this shit should be banned. Especially when it's stupid obvious that there is no randomness behind the scenes.

> "You must be 18+ to access Big Fish Casino/Jackpot Magic Slots. This game does not offer gambling or an opportunity to win real money or prizes. Practice or success at social gaming does not imply future success at gambling."

So, you're able to pour them money and no way to get it back. What exactly is the money for then? Why this does not qualify as a scam? Just because of the disclaimer?

I don't think many people playing these games are fooled into somehow thinking they'll win their money back. Certainly the 21 big spenders in the article knew they wouldn't.

Different people crave different rewards. Some people may care more about the financial reward, but they're out playing some other gambling game that caters to them.

The Double U Casino used to have a team check-in, where you could send your team bonuses and they saw that you checked in with them. I know it sounds stupid, but this was a real way that I was connecting with my parents, and then they shut it down.

Incidentally the name of our team was Roman Catholicism, because most of the teams were full and this was one that was not full. Whoever started Roman Catholicism left the group, and eventually we became the admins of Roman Catholicism. It was a sad day for me as a part of my family when Roman Catholicism closed its doors.

I should call my folks! I think they still use the casino app, even without any money or social investment, they still enjoy it and I made sure they had nice tablets to use the app on. This is still working, even without the social aspect. It's still valuable to us, we game as a family, even if we're not always together.

Anyway, would you ban Roman Catholicism because they're believing in what is not really true? I think someone baited me into this position, I wouldn't even make this ridiculous argument except that all of this literally happened and I am not making any of it up. Casino app keeps family together, son calls his parents more often after they get disconnected by the oppressive dev team that shut it down. I'll be here all week, try the Clams Casino at the bar.

All of Apple's credability about needing to maintain control over iOS apps and App Store goes out the window once it's evident they make a fuck tonne of money selling casino games to children (and adults).

These people are literally, knowingly giving their money, with no expectation of getting any back.

They are criticised because they have created something expressly designed to develop compulsion in as many people as possible. They aggressively tune their products to increase that compulsion and to prevent their victims from breaking it.

At the end of the day, there needs to be some level of personal responsibility.

Apple and Google simply need to draft a policy and decide to do it.

This app skips the winning and some degree spending, money part altogether. Which is smart if you want to exploit gambling addincts and avoid regulations.

Some People seem to get in the zone and get completely lost. Sometimes that happens to me while coding. But i can't do it for long and unlike gambling it pays.

It is hard to get up from the machine and some even shit themselves. The big casinos often have emergency teams for the people who get heart attacks and die on their chairs in front of the slot machine.

It is truly bizzare I never understood the appeal but some people are drawn to this and get absolutely zombiefied.

Gambling addiction truly is one of the worst things that can happen to someone.

I also enjoyed Fish Tycoon and Diner Dash by them.

Seems like they got sold to a casino operator? Unfortunate that this is what makes money.

The reverse engineering is interesting because they rolled their own engine and most of the game is written in Lua 5.1.

I also personally find it interesting as the binaries and code in general is tiny, so its a good way to learn.

But what if someone sets up a casino where there is no chance of a cash payout? No matter what, the player loses 100% of the money they put in. For some reason we do not regulate this kind of casino at all! It's totally wild. This kind of casino should be the MOST regulated, or banned entirely. Worst of all, we let children participate!

Slot machines that use worthless virtual currency, award only virtual currency, but let you buy virtual currency with real currency? Playing one of those is worse than playing a real slot machine, or even playing a rigged real slot machine! At least both of those have some non-zero chance of paying out real money.

Lootboxes in video games? That's gambling with a 0% payout. All you get are worthless JPGs. And we let children participate!

Crane games at the arcade? Those are just vending machines with programmed odds. They are gambling! We let children play them.

Baseball, Pokemon, or Magic cards? Other collectibles that come in blind boxes or sealed packs? These are gambling! Sure, some will argue that these are different because no matter what you are getting some minimum prize. A pack of Pokemon cards will always contain 10 cards no matter what. Well, what if I make a $5 slot machine that at minimum always pays out 50 cents no matter what you spin? How is that different from a $4.50 slot machine that has the potential to pay out $0? Changing the odds and payouts doesn't make it not gambling.

IMHO, all of these activities should be completely banned for children. No games of chance whatsoever if they cost real money per-play.

As for adults, consenting and informed adults can throw away their money if they want. But all of these activities should be heavily regulated. And the casinos that don't pay out a cent should be MORE heavily regulated than the normal ones.

Trying to draw a bright, defining line between watching a movie and buying a video game and playing an arcade game or Skeeball seems practically impossible. We don’t want to force everyone to be stuck at home playing “blow the ball of yarn to the opponent’s side of the table”.

I think it's very easy to draw a line. When you pay money, the result has to be specifically given up front. It cannot be based on random chance. If you wan to buy a Pokemon card you have to buy a specific card (or a set with fixed cards included). If you want to buy virtual clothes for your avatar then you have to buy specific objects. If you want to buy a doll then you buy a specific model, not a random box.

The incentives for the govt to regulate virtual gambling sims(that don't pay out) arent as strong, especially when these companies pay tax on that VIP revenue.

"GAMBLING, for the compulsive gambler is defined as follows: Any betting or wagering, for self or others, whether for money or not, no matter how slight or insignificant, where the outcome is uncertain or depends upon chance or 'skill' constitutes gambling."

http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/ga/content/questions-answer...

I found the article to be a bit sparse on these details. Maybe there's another source?

This isn’t just gambler vs some other person.

This is one person against a resource pool worth millions of dollars. No individual in aggregate has a chance against that.

Just like if you fall victim to a phone scam, sure it's somewhat your fault, but clearly it's mainly the fault of the scammer.

This is generational wealth that gets lost in gambling. It is the responsibility of a strong society to prevent scams, and to protect people from very damaging forms of manipulation.

Because when a fool is parted from his money he and those who depend on him starve to death, and that, dear friend, is the part a strong society should be concerned about.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160887/ad...

These are games where you earn points (in the form of tokens). Those points place you on a leaderboard within your club.

Just like if you were playing any their game which gives you a score and let's you compare your score with other people.

The catch here is that the games are all simulated Casino games - and one way to boost your score if you got "unlucky" is to spend real money on more fake tokens.

The games are "fun" because they emulate 100+ years of casino development in terms of figuring out what mechanisms people enjoy the most.

Individuals are intelligent, but groups of people create peer pressure, and individuals become capable of the most stupid behavior imaginable. Just wasting money isn't even the most extreme form.

But the government regulates plenty of addictive things that are not "winning real money".

The thing in common is a for-profit company taking advantage of a weakness of human nature, which in some cases leaves a meaningful number of people financially destitute. I think there's at least an argument to be made that it's worth putting up some protective measures.

The sociopaths that gleefully exploit human psychology for their own financial gain should be stamped out.

> Most addicts love their addictions; most of the ones that don’t eventually stop.

Source? This doesn't match up with any addict I've interacted with or seen in media. The majority seem to fall between being unaware, in denial, or deeply unhappy about it but are unable to break their dependency.

Once you’re in that addiction cycle, you crave the dopamine rush and play just for the feeling of maybe winning back a big loss even when in reality a big win probably won’t even make you break even.

It’s why people just sit in front of slot machines for hours on end.

Simply said lot of "games" are disguised Skinner boxes, people with addictive personalities are very vulnerable to those.

You’re correct that those chips are exchangeable for real money but the chips still serve a very real purpose: to dissuade you from picking up the cash and walking out. The vast majority of people who win chips plug them straight back into the casino games and end up leaving with nothing. It’s all about the addiction to gambling itself, winning money is merely a potential bonus. So the end result is not a whole lot different than these apps.

There is a very limited set of circumstances in which playing a game with negative EV can be rational (e.g. if your utility function for money isn't linear); everything else seems like a more or less thinly disguised attempt to exploit certain properties of the human mind's/brain's reward system. (It's a philosophical question on whether consent can even theoretically be given to that exploitation.)

I'd argue that the magnitude of the expected loss per game (i.e. everything or only a fraction of it – but in iterated games it's always everything as well) is much less relevant than that.

Edit for clarification: excluding the staff, who obviously earn wages there, if the average person made any money gambling in an average casino, casinos would quickly go bankrupt.

If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist

> If they never paid out, people would never go and the casinos would not exist

This is self evidently false based on the linked article. Random chance games that have no possibility of ever having a net payout attract tons of players and make a lot of money.

I think the problem is analyzing this with the economic "rational consumer" model of human behavior. Gambling is not rational but extremely popular because people are not rational. The whole industry is a trap that feeds users dopamine rewards in exchange for money. Once you're in, the payouts have little to do with it.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jQIHqkudgNY

If the average person would win money, the casino would cease to exist.

Sounds like these apps are more honest.

By this logic, 99% of bartenders should be alcoholics.

The clubs appear to be like guilds or teams in online games, players collaborate for high scores and to maintain a ranking on a leaderboard. The problem is that once someone joins a team, they feel pressure to generate points to contribute to the team's success, which often requires in-app payments to obtain more coins to wager.

They are addicted to “exclusivity”.

This same type of thing impacts all video games with gambling aspects or drop rates.

I’ve played Diablo 2 for decades and have never once dropped a rune higher ist, and the sub vehemently defends those drop rates.

Many defended the Diablo 4 Uber rare rates.

What’s the point in playing just for some strange exclusivity? Who knows. Gotta ask the people that defend the ever increasing annoying rarity of shit on the premise that they believe they alone play enough to end up in some sort of exclusive club of owners.

I would say, just play a different game that doesn't have this toxic reward system.

women with schizophrenia actually tend to develop symptoms in their 20s, much later than men; lymes disease is real but also often a fixation for the mentally ill and hypochondriacs since the symptoms are so vague and varied, so it is likely that the bite is irrelevant and she fixated on it as her symptoms were developing for genetic (or whatever) reasons