The state of Nevada has passed legislation legalizing online gambling and further paving the way to the day when it will be legal to lose (or win) all your money gambling on your phone.Specifically, the legislation allows Nevada to move forward in allowing online poker legal in lieu of federal legislation and to create interstate compacts with other states to allow their citizens to gamble on Nevada-based online casinos.Why am I sharing this on Gamezebo? Because every single social game company (especially the social casinos) are salivating at the chance to offer legalized gambling in their games.
Full-on social online gambling might not becoming a part of our everyday lives especially soon, but that hasn't stopped casino games from becoming the most popular social gaming genre. DoubleDown, eager to push its casino presence while it's hot, has announced the addition of Texas Hold 'Em poker to its array of DoubleDown Casino games. It seems only fitting that Facebook's largest virtual casino adds the most popular variant of poker.
It's official. According to AllThingsD, Zynga has confirmed that it is currently investigating getting into Internet gambling, assuming it is made legal (which it will be).It should come as no surprise that Zynga is seeking partners in Internet gambling. Zynga Poker is still the top poker game on Facebook, Zynga has announced plans to create a Zynga Casino suite of games, and there has been a lot of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity around social game companies that focus on casinos recently.What is surprising is that they are tipping their hand around this strategy, just a month after going IPO. Internet gambling still is illegal in the US and Zynga just went public with the intention of becoming the number company to play games, not to gamble. So, why the admission, when it would have been just as easy to play it coy?
IGT, a leading gaming (and by gaming, I really mean, gambling) company, has placed a huge bet that social games is the next frontier to the gaming business by acquiring Double Down Interactive for $500 million.Double Down Interactive is the developer of hugely successful DoubleDown Casino, which attracts 14 million daily active users (DAUs) and 4.7 million monthly active users (MAUs) month playing in their virtual slot machines for virtual money.
There's a new face in town in DoubleDown Casino, and it could be yours. The developer's behind the game have launched a brand new slot machine game called Photo Booth Friends that replaces the images on the slot real with the profile pictures of your friends.