BUMP

Well well well... looks like Skillz is now on the ass end of unethical behavior. While Skillz itself is on the shady side, for reasons already enumerated in this thread, now they find themselves being crushed by a company which allegedly stole their intellectual property AND is cheating its players.

Skillz is suing AviaGames for stealing its IP, and indeed it looks like they have a strong point here:

Look at the games "Blackout Bingo" (Skillz) and "Bingo Clash" (AviaGames), and you'll see it's virtually identical:




Skillz has been suing AviaGames since mid-2021, claiming that Avia stole two of their proprietary games, and in fact stealthily took a contract position as a Skillz games developer in 2016, in order to learn their platform better.

A good description of the situation is here: https://venturebeat.com/games/feds-s...n-skill-games/



BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE!

A more recent development had Skillz allegedly discover that AviaGames was running bots against its own winning players, crushing them out of any money they managed to rack up!

It's all in that article linked above.


Here's an ad for Skillz's Blackout Bingo:





Here's an ad for AviaGames' Bingo Clash:





Skillz is so butthurt over this that they are now posting notices in their games that AviaGames runs bots, and they're suing them!

I believe Skillz is probably correct, and AviaGames is likely even shadier than they are. But do I feel sorry for Skillz? Not at all. This unethical company misleads users into believing their games will help them "earn extra cash", when in reality their awful "fair play algorithm" assures almost everyone loses in the medium and long term.

Both companies suck.