Royal Match Online Game Violates Washington Gambling Law, Class Action Lawsuit Alleges

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The operator of Royal Match faces a proposed class action lawsuit that claims the online game constitutes illegal gambling under Washington state law.

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The 23-page lawsuit alleges that Dream Games Teknoloji Anonim Sirketi has unlawfully profited from tens of thousands of consumers who have played the Turkish company’s purportedly “free-to-play” online game, which allegedly has “all the same trappings” as a casino game.

Although Royal Match is touted as a “free-to-play” game, the “term is a misnomer,” the fraud lawsuit charges. While a consumer can download the game for free, their in-game purchases generate massive profits for the company, the case relays.

In Royal Match, a player must complete levels in a certain number of moves by matching three or more of the same type of object in a line on the puzzle board, which is purportedly populated by chance, the suit shares. According to the case, the tile-matching game provides a limited number of virtual gold coins and “lives” to players for free. Once a user “inevitably lose[s] their allotment of lives and coins,” they may purchase additional coins with real money, without which they cannot refill their lives or continue playing the level they failed, the complaint says.

The filing contends that Royal Match is essentially an online gambling game—prohibited under Washington law—because it is a game of chance wherein consumers can wager coins that have real value and earn “winnings” such as additional coins or extended gameplay.

Furthermore, the suit claims the company manipulates the odds of Royal Match to “increase [its] addictive qualities” and induce users into spending money on coins and in-game items. For example, the complaint alleges that certain levels are made “nearly impossible to pass initially” so that players will exhaust their lives and coins and buy more to keep playing. Likewise, the filing asserts, if users fail certain levels repeatedly, the game will “alter the odds of the type and sequence of game objects populating the game board to make levels easier to pass” and keep players from quitting, the lawsuit argues.

Moreover, to “further manipulate users into spending money,” the online game misleadingly advertises limited-time sales on coin bundles and other in-game items, the suit contends.

“In reality, Royal Match offers the same or substantially similar such ‘sales’ continuously or almost continuously,” the case states.

The Royal Match lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the United States who has played the online game and lost purchased lives and coins in the defendant’s games of chance.

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