Crosslinking is at work within many gaming sub-industries: in the social and mobile, and in the regular gaming sphere. It can be done via crosspromotion that is a well-developed industry standard. Any indie developer, or any gaming company that has a number of readily available games, does cross-promotion between their games. And this entails crosslinking of real money games with social games to boost conversions in both.
Crosslinking via introduction of similar features
As mentioned in our previous article on “Social casino game trends”, crosslinking can be done via the introduction of features that are customary to real money games into the social gaming sphere. The great example is a recent introduction of live dealers in online card games in social games to imitate the feel of a real casino and the real presence. It is an option with lots of potential, as social casino gamers are paying on equal terms as the real money gamblers, just in different ways.
PokerStars as Great Example of Real Money and Social Gambling Crosslinking
PokerStars is a top online platform to play poker for fun and real money. Accordingly, all that relates to real money play requires a strong regulatory policy that it had issues with. Not so long ago all online poker was banned in the US, and the company had to pay hefty fines to avoid litigation. Nevertheless, after this slump, the company was able to reinstate itself as a leader while putting an emphasis on social gambling in the lucrative countries where the legislation did not allow for real money stakes.
To reenter the real money gambling, PokerStars has to regulate the mechanisms, the probability of winning, as well as its back-end and front-end processes, and check the clients’ eligibility to gamble. All of this takes a bunch of tests, and everything has to be documented. Having done that the social and real money play is very similar in its essence and allows for a seamless crosslinking. And with the recent introduction of BetStars and PokerStars Casino, the company took crosslinking to a whole new level, as they have not only introduced sports betting and casino games in one single platform but interconnected both of them with poker experiences.
Crosslinking of Skill-Based Gambling to Be Introduced Across Industry
Interconnection of casino mechanics with poker as a skill-based game is the best way to attract millennials and the older generation as well. In most cases, casinos attract females over the age of 35 and the online poker community is a trove of younger under 25 folks who love and have the know-how in skill-based gaming.
Even without taking into account the meta gameplay, the successful introduction of crosslinking of skill-based gambling is a great source of revenue and new software developments. This can be done with the help of industry professional software development outsourcing companies that can introduce new features with ease. You can read the latest whitepaper on gaming and gambling here.
Financial Benefits in New Approaches to Attracting Online Traffic
Gaining traffic for social and real money gambling is though quite different. While most operators do their best to offer a unified platform where people can easily switch between fun and cash gambles, the end goal for many of them is to drive more traffic into the real money gambling.
Indeed, social gaming lets the real-money gambling industry attract new gamers via the social media feed and create a new and less expensive source of traffic that has a high probability of converting into paying customers. Attracting real-money gamblers through the standard advertising and promotion means remains highly competitive and requires a lot of funding that needs to be returned through active gambling and customer retention. This becomes even more complex taking into account the strict winning probabilities that need to be counted in when developing gambling software. To save costs and keep the quality on par, gambling corporation employs companies like Innovecs to outsourcing software development. Get to know more by following this link.
Moneywise it is clear that attracting social gamblers is much more attractive. But another reason is that with social gambling there is no need to follow strict legal rules as the gamers’ winnings cannot be converted into real money. And by offering the interlinking with real money platform, gambling companies can build on the success of social games and boost the popularity of new game types and get paying customers cheaper. It is better to use such mechanics to attract new customers. Other ones can easily cost $50-100 per user and can be compensated (and that is not always the case) over a longer period of time as the LTV and retention costs should be factored in as well.
Legal Woes As a Major Differentiating Factor
The major issue remains: Will the regulatory policy get in the way of real money and social gambling?
Let’s go back to the most important difference between the two. Real money casino games are based on the fact that real money is invested, and users can receive the real money back as winnings. And there is very strong, good quality and elaborated regulatory policy to support this. Although such policies are regional, they are still governed by strict rules and laws. So why is social gambling much more interesting legal-wise? The main positive point is that the regulatory policy is operated on the platform itself. By this, it means that there’s no need to pass some kind of legalization or getting approved by specialized bodies and have in check the probabilities of winning as the prizes have nothing of value, except for the fans.
But the question of supporting legality and strict regulatory policies in crosslinking may still be an issue to some. If a platform has a crosslinking of social and real money and vice versa, the regulatory policies are actually not interchangeable.
The fact is that the operators who provide a link to its real money platform should clearly state that the game is for money and that the platform received all necessary regulatory confirmations and the paperwork is in order. Accordingly, when users come to the platform, their information is recorded, they read and agree to the rules and see a clear difference in the social gaming part of the platform, where all the information needed is first name, email and not much else. This is not a problem, and there is nothing illegal about such crosslinking.
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