(FWIW, I haven't been with the company since 2012.)
In addition to the gambling issues, the presence of poker machines in my city has help kill off the live music scene. Pub owners now prefer to make their money from zombies-slot players, and the community and friendly atmosphere created by humans playing music has been practically destroyed as a result.
IMO poker machines, especially, are a blight on the gaming world. I only feel lucky the dumbed-down 'game play' is nothing that would appeal to me or people I know, and personally speaking I would never want to use my software skills to help separate some of society's most vulnerable and naive from their money.
I would reason that, same as for alcohol and other drugs, there should be more money directed from profits towards support for addicts. I realise it's not a good idea, in general, to be overly paternalistic in general; my statement was made more from a personal point of view in terms of what work I would or would not be involved in.
I understand if you don't feel comfortable answering in public though.
(and to be clear: while I have strong personal feelings about whether I would or should create gambling apps, I'm truly not writing this as an excuse to judge you. Doing so would be hypocritical, as there's plenty behavior in my life currently that doesn't fit my convictions.)
EDIT: just noticed you've already gone into this further down in the conversation.
Some very random thoughts and (sorry to yell but I know someone is going to tell me how one of these doesn't justify things but...) NONE OF THESE ARE MEANT TO JUSTIFY ANYTHING:
1. I am just a dev and had never been to a casino in my life prior to developing the game. I just took the job since I wanted to go the high risk/hard reward route. I am fully cognizant of the "I was just the accountant at Auschwitz" counter argument. I just developed the thing and had fun, frustration, and huge amounts of stress learning about things like high concurrency and such.
2. I am guilty of compartmentalizing and avoid thinking about the effects.
3. I was under the understanding that for a a while at least we were cutting people off when they spent over a certain amount. I assume at some point we stopped doing this, but avoided asking when.
4. Due to political reasons, I was sidelined and didn't have any decision making clout. I was just a dev once we grew to a certain point.
5. I'm fairly far to the left politically, but found some of the more libertarian arguments persuasive in terms of adults are adults and should be able to smoke weed, drink beer, and play slots if they want to.
6. I tell myself that with the money earned, I can now do good things for the world and any projects I do from now on will be non-profitish. I have yet to do anything of the sort.
7. It was all very gradual. If an existing casino company had tried to hire me, I would likely have not worked for them. We started off with multiplayer games like Blackjack and Roulette and the focus was on social really more than casino. It's the kind of lobster boiling problem: Since it was so gradual, it was tough to see if/when a line was crossed.
8. Casino has a particularly bad reputation. Is working for J.P. Morgan any better? What about Starbucks, which has basically built their empire on a caffeine addiction?
I didn't really expect an answer, so thank you for giving one anyway. From what you write, I get the impression that could be described as a "slippery slope" kind of situation, which I can understand. I don't know how I'd behave myself given those circumstances, although I'd of course like to think I'd resist somehow - but perhaps I'm fooling myself. And you are right that there are a lot of industries of questionable/negative moral worth out there (I listed a few of my picking in my previous comment, but you could add certain parts of banking/finance industry, tobacco industry and many others..)
I guess what amazes me is the number of people willing to sacrifice their limited time on this planet to actively work on stuff that is (if one is being honest with oneself) providing net negative value to society as a whole, making this world a shittier place for everyone. (Saying this as a relatively non-religious person).
Well, casinos make their money by financially immiserating their customers, while J.P. Morgan is almost directly the opposite - they want to make all their clients wealthier. And (some extreme individual cases perhaps excepted), nobody ever ruined their life because of "caffeine addiction" (a somewhat dubious concept).
That said, I do subscribe to the "live and let live" position on the matter, and I don't think people should be criticized for working for a gambling business (or tobacco, alcohol, freemium mobile games, or other businesses in the same realm).
My first job was writing code for a company that took advantage of poor and desperate people. I didn't see that for a few years. But, it was a good veneer -- help people who wanted to go to school to improve their lot in life. I genuinely thought I was doing something good.
But these for-profit schools ended up abusing government regulations and guarantees around student loans, which has largely led to the student loan crisis. However, I thought that I was buying stuff in my community, it bought my family a house and a reliable car, and we were paying a lot of taxes.
Every company has some variation on this. Starbucks has been great for coffee growers around the world and has exposed many people to boutique/single-origin coffee, but like you said, it's built on addiction. But any restaurant is doing the same -- they're doing whatever they can to bring you in and have you pay money for food. I mean, you have to eat, right? And restaurants are all about flavor and presentation and unique ingredients -- they're triggering your dopamine, which they hope will entice the diner to spend more money. Car salesmen are the same way -- everybody kinda needs a car, but they try to take advantage of our lack of information, and try to cover it with dopamine-based ideas: smooth leather, new car smell, perfect paintjob, fast car, get a bunch of chicks, people will really know you've done well in life, etc.
Everything in live is built on dopamine though -- it's why we do anything. To reduce it to dopamine trigger = bad for humanity is not fair.
Re: #8. I don't see casinos and drugs (including alcohol) going away any time soon, and attempting to stop them is misdirected in my opinion. The problem is that for a small proportion of the public (typically people with mental health issues) they end up being used as self-medication, often unknowingly, and can make bad situations worse - leading to financial ruin, families torn apart, suicide or overdose in the case of drugs. (JP Morgan & Starbucks don't have these properties.)
For that reason, in the meatspace, casinos are highly regulated and need to identify and protect vulnerable people. So yes - while your app is a substitute for a physical activity, in the physical world that person would have gone through many more hoops that would have allowed people to help them or notice their problem. In digital space, there is no such visibility and there are no regulations, which is why it becomes interesting to see what people do and say about what they do.
Thing is I know that a lot of our customers really, really love it, because we spend a lot of time making the games really great and fun to play. They know that at the end of the day they lose money, but the same is the case for going to the movies (cost of tickets + drinks), a theme park, etc.
"What a scam Double down Casino is. It's designed for the player to fail with low odds of winning. I've bought probably close to $100 in chips the past few months. Just bought $8.00 today to play the American Idol Slot machine and money was gone within 15 minutes. This is ridiculous. It's not like I'm winning real money back but rather looking for some entertainment. I could have paid that and enjoyed a movie for 2 hours. Will never buy another chip again and warn everyone against doing it. They get you hooked before long. I would rather go out and buy a computer casino program for $20 bucks and have endless entertainment. This company is raking in a fortune and giving nothing in return !!!!"
Do I think you are a bad person--no. Do I feel too many people take advantage of the poor, depressed, and uniformed--yes. Do I feel people rationalize their behavior in the sake of money--yes.
This is how our economy and capitalism in general work. There is no room for morality in such a system (though that's not to say there shouldn't be). By your same logic, employees of health insurance companies should be held responsible for their companies actions leading to the preventable death of their customers. Employees working for aircraft companies should be held responsible for the deaths their armed fighters cause. And the guy making minimum wage at the gas station should further be held responsible for the actions of his parent company and the thousands of death they caused. These are all ridiculous things, as is expecting someone who has worked on gambling games to feel morally irresponsible for doing nothing wrong.