SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Social gaming companies DoubleDown, RocketPlay, PlayStudios, Zynga, Plumbee, have joined forces with IGT, Caesars Interactive Entertainment, Aristocrat MGM and Gamesys to form the international Social Gaming Coalition in order to bring further clarity and education to the current social gaming scene. The Social Games Coalition, will also provide an industry voice for Social Gaming amid increasing regulatory uncertainty as to what constitutes social gaming. The Social Games Coalition and its founding members where announced at ‘the Social Casino Summit’ at this year’s Global iGaming Summit & Expo (GiGSE) last end of May.
The coalition will be led by Facebook’s former European Policy Manager Luc Delany and under the chairmanship of Playstudios COO and co-founder Paul Mathews. Mathews and Delany are aiming to expand the group by bringing in new members from both social gaming., igaming and other industries that may have a growing focus on social gaming formats. Mathews commenting that “there is nothing fundamentally different” between social casino and other social genres.I think the chatter in the industry is about regulation of gambling-style games so naturally our founders are in that space,” he explained. “So yes, we do want members who are strictly social to work along with the gambling partners.”
Mathews revealed that initial formulation discussions for the Coalition had begun at the ICE Totally Gaming Conference back in February 2013. Luc Delany had been hired specifically by the Social Gaming Coalition to head this new initiative
The Social Gaming Coalition will share information agreements between members with the aim to educate regulators, governments and media companies about the sector – something which Mathews claimed will ensure the industry is accepted as a legitimate entity. Furthermore the Coalition will aim to form Best Practice papers for future start ups and learning institutions. “A lot of the questions which have been raised can easily be answered if companies are prepared to share this information. I think that when [these groups] understand what we do they will see there is a solution which seems to portrayed as in search of a problem at the moment,” Mathews said.
