Zynga and the dodgy advertiser – a short story

Spending over a decade becoming acquainted with the vagaries of UK advertising and gambling law occasionally has its perks, one of which is the ability to bring down a very public arse kicking when one of the more nefarious characters in the online gaming industry goes rogue. The bad apples that give the rest of us a bad name.

Once in a while, you get the chance to shine. A day of redemption during which you get to openly and publicly shame the people who are acting like proper chancers

Today is that day.

Last week I was biding my evening playing ‘Words with Friends 2’, a gentle and brain massaging Scrabble rip off from the clever folks at gaming behemoth Zynga. The same Zynga that plagued the viral gaming world with hits such as Farmville and Zynga Poker. With revenues of $907.2 million in 2018 and a market cap running into the Billions, they’re serious players. As such, they should know better.

Mid way through my efforts to construct a five letter word using the letter Q (without the availability of a necessary ‘U’ – ‘Niqab’ was the high scorer) I was presented with a brightly lit video ad for an App game called ‘Plinko Master’.

Nothing new there – you play ‘Words with Friends’ free in exchange for infrequent ads, so fair enough.

Except this ad was different.

Glaring neon colours and an Asian cafe scene showed a girl trying to buy her lunch. Realising that she didn’t have enough cash to pay, the leering server suggested she play Plinko Master with the call to action being, loosely:-

“Play this game to win money if you can't afford food”.

Anyone in the online gaming industry will immediately join me in realising how very, very bad that is for a UK facing ad campaign for a monetised App game.

On deeper investigation, I found that it’s actually a free to play game that profits from Ad revenue rather than monetary buy-in. It promises free cash or an Amazon voucher when you hit a certain number of points, but the algorithm seemingly picks winners at random. Almost every review suggests that the points slowed dramatically as players approached a cash out level – thus extending player lifetimes and thus ad revenue in perpetuity.

Effectively the game suggests free money, keeps players on the hook for weeks and sells their eyeballs to advertisers. It has the air of an unwinnable ‘hoops and bottles’ game at the fair.

The game’s not illegal. Hell, even the misleading ad probably scrapes past the ASA’s rule book on misleading advertising - but it shouldn’t. And a company like Zynga worth a few dollars short of $10 Billion definitely shouldn’t be lining their greasy pockets with cash from these muckrakers. Amazon and PayPal both feature heavily, too if their famously litigious lawyers fancy having a look.

I was intrigued and, let’s face it, not exactly busy with work, so I downloaded Plinko Master to see what was down the rabbit hole.

It’s a meaningless ball dropping game with very frequent ‘Bonus’ pop ups – the first of which offered me a ￡5 Amazon voucher – but led me instead to an App download for ‘Play Spot UK’ – another ‘free to play’ business.

The company behind Plinko Master is Good Luck Studio Ltd, a UK registered company with a sole Director – one Mali Gravelle of Cathedral Road, Cardiff. I’d imagine there is a shell company somewhere overhead affiliated with PlaySpot.io and likely many more. They’re scams, albeit ones that waste people’s time as opposed to money. That said, any business profiteering from player exploitation and misleading, ethically unsound ads in the current climate that attracts players through the promise:- “Play the game to win money if you can't afford food” deserves to be taken outside and shot.

I’d encourage Zynga, Amazon and PayPal to have a serious think about which advertisers and partners they get into bed with as right now, they’re at risk of catching fleas…