Gambling on Facebook
Facebook gambling

Game developers are making billions from games hosted on Facebook but the real jackpot may still be ahead.

At Tuesday’s Gaming Developers Conference Facebook shared some interesting figures about the gaming scene at the social networking giant.

It had been no secret that a large number of members visit their Facebook accounts to play games for most of the duration of their stay. The exact extent of this activity is nevertheless staggering.

It turns out that 20% of users play games on Facebook daily, which adds up to a colossal 250 million people – as large as the whole adult population of the USA – who play at least once a month (but usually much more often than that).

Considering the huge selection of games accessible through Facebook, everyone with a knack for gaming can find something there. There are of course titles with a huge following: around 200 games have already exceeded the one million mark in terms of active monthly players. Over 100 developers have also passed this mark in terms of the USD revenue generated.

Although leading the pack is the puzzle adventure game Candy Crush, casino games also have their fans. The only thing limiting their popularity for now is the lack of real-money gaming.

If companies like Zynga manage to implement their plans aimed at offering players the chance to actually win real money on online blackjack, poker, roulette or other card and table games, the annual revenue of Facebook game developer companies could skyrocket from the current amount of USD 2.8 billion.

Furthermore, considering that most games hosted on Facebook must be installed as standalone apps on today’s smartphones, it is certain that the availability of real-money mobile casino gambling would also boost the already immense traffic going from the social network to the Apple App Store and to Google Play.

What amounted to 263 million clicks in February would definitely grow by millions more, with legions of players hurrying over to those sites in order to download and install the desired mobile casino software.