In ruling that may affect other games, US appeals court says Big Fish Casino constitutes illegal online gambling under WA law; case returns to district court
Nat Levy / GeekWire : Thanks: @taylor_soper
Context & Ripple Effects
The Ninth Circuit's ruling converts a user lawsuit into a precedent: chips bought in Big Fish Casino are 'things of value,' making the free-to-play model itself illegal gambling under Washington law. The case's arc ran from this remand through Big Fish Games' eventual $155M class action settlement, where users described losing significant sums on casino-style apps.
Washington has since become the most aggressive jurisdiction for applying its gambling statute to digital products — the same regulator framework behind the cease-and-desist ordering Valve to stop facilitating virtual-item gambling and, years later, the rulings blocking Kalshi's prediction-market contracts in the state.
First-order effects
- Big Fish returns to district court facing a viable damages theory on every chip purchase made by Washington players, with the ruling expressly flagged as potentially affecting other games.
- Other social-casino publishers selling virtual chips to Washington users now face the same exposure, since the 'thing of value' logic does not depend on cashing out.
Second-order effects
- Publishers of casino-style mobile games must either geo-restrict or restructure monetization in Washington, while plaintiffs' lawyers gain a tested template for class actions across the genre.
- Washington regulators gain judicial backing for extending gambling enforcement beyond casinos to any digital product where users pay for wagerable value — the posture that later produced the Valve and Kalshi actions.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, state gambling statutes rather than federal gaming law become the binding constraint on wagering-adjacent digital products, forcing platforms to comply with the strictest state or fragment their offerings by geography.
The trend: Washington's courts and regulators are steadily applying one of the nation's broadest gambling laws to digital products — social casino chips, in-game items, and prediction markets alike.