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I cofounded a startup based around a similar idea. We were (attempting) to make an API that mobile game developers could plug into their games to add skill based cash tournaments.

Mine was called Foosler. There were a couple others - Cashplay and Skillz.

Shut 'er down after a couple years of hard work and lessons learned. It's a hard business to make work. Good luck to Etherplay :)




Were the problems primarily regulatory?


Problems:

1. It was my cofounder and I's first startup and we lacked marketing skills

2. Most causal players perceive that for a given game, there are many people out there way better than them, so they didn't want to risk any money

3. Mobile game developers are quite happy playing the freemium lottery

4. Google changed their ToS and our stuff was written in Java

5. Startup newbies make bad decisions




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