Betable and 3OAK partner up
Betable 3OAK

Companies are looking beyond classic casino games with new partnership.

San Francisco-based gaming platform company Betable has signed up another client, giving them access to the online gambling market. The partner in question is 3OAK, the newly formed real-money gaming division of Canadian independent developers Frima Studio.

The move is in line with the general market trends of transitioning from virtual currency social gaming (with no money being paid out) to social gambling. Betable’s business model of providing developers a platform to integrate the real-money gaming element into their products, taking advantage of the company’s existing UK gambling license, has been very successful so far.

Betable CEO Chris Griffin sounded upbeat about the agreement: “We are real excited about this. That has been the thesis of Betable. We make it easy for companies to go into the real-money space, leveraging creativity and know-how from non-gambling games.“

The company has already signed up several major clients. Perhaps the most significant among them is Big Fish from Seattle, whose iPhone casino games are among the biggest moneymakers in the U.S.

Possessing a gambling license and thereby sparing clients the time and effort needed to obtain it on their own was indeed one of the deciding factors for Frima/3OAK when considering the partnership. According to 3OAK director Mikael Lefebvre, Betable has “already secured legality, which is a blessing to us. It makes our life much easier.”

Establishing their leading role early on has granted Betable a competitive advantage to capitalize on the said market trends. Furthermore, the company is also in a good position to take advantage of any possible changes in America, as more and more US states make efforts to legalize online and mobile casino gambling.

The partnership with Frima/3OAK, however, is not merely another deal about poker and slots and similar mobile casino software. Both partners are looking further down the road, with the aim of broadening their reach beyond the regular breed of online casino gamblers. The idea behind this particular deal is to attract players with titles that have not been considered gambling games so far.

“We want to reach a much larger market with real-money gambling, and to do that, you have to do it with games that have broader appeal than casino games. We are particularly excited about Frima. They are redefining what it means to play games with real money,” said Betable’s Griffin of the partnership.

Redefining is of course a challenging process. Introducing real money into social gaming is not just a matter of ironing out some technical details. There are also various legal issues involved. Moreover, developers must be extremely careful in modeling the potential impact of in-game cash circulation on game economics and social relationships.