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Comment by cheeze | Hacker News Reader

What is Skillz? Can anyone provide context?

Skillz is a company that provides real-money components (gambling, iirc) for mobile games. If you have a mobile game, it's a platform you can tack on to allow your players to compete against eachother for cash (and so monetize your game).

https://www.skillz.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skillz_(company)

I really am living to see manmade horrors beyond my comprehension.

Is this really that hard to comprehend? It's a slight twist on a ticket based arcade game or a slot machine. It's pretty common knowledge that they are a waste of money.

The concept of having a slot machine in my pocket sets off so many mental alarm bells that it’s incomprehensible to me that people would gamble on what looks like Bejeweled.

I’m not saying it’s good. But it hardly seems beyond comprehension.

Sharks on mobile non-gambling games can easily spend over $500 a month on a game.

That's the "buy an energy refill to chop more wood!" sort of games.

Now imagine if you pretend it's a competition. You can "beat the machine", as these games are dressed up. And you can wager on them.

Every casino in Vegas has lifers burning their cash. Now you spread that to over a billion devices with no gambling commission.

Just wait until you learn about human history.

If it's players competing against each other, then skill-based matchmaking would lead to most players having a roughly 50% win rate naturally. But the win rates are the only real reason the OP gives for this being a scam. So the submission could really do with some extra context.

they claim to have very sophisticated anti-cheat tech that he was able to overcome with a simple MITM attack

This is from their IPO S-1:

"We collect over 300 data points during each gameplay session to feed our big data assets which augment all elements of our platform. Our key data science technologies drive our player rating and matching, anti-cheat and anti-fraud, and user experience personalization engine."

Wow - that’s just a blatant lie.

I worked there for about a month before it was named skillz. One thing I didn't expect was how much the psychology of a casual game changes when there's money on the line. Imagine playing 5 minutes of angry birds while waiting for a bus, versus playing the same game for bus fare.

They create and offer games[1] that purport to be a way for users to win real money. This is gambling though the company uses very precise language to try to avoid being classified as a gambling company (since that would make their business super illegal in a bunch of jurisdictions). They are, from reports, extremely scummy[2] and, to be honest, their entire business is exploitative and targets people with addictions.

1. https://games.skillz.com/

2. https://ca.trustpilot.com/review/skillz.com

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