[wahsd]

It actually is rather solidly into gambling territory. It's basically a worse version of pachinko or even slot machines. It's primary purpose is to draw the user in to addiction in an unregulated system of player manipulation. There is nothing preventing those pathetic savages at king.com from implementing algorithms that manipulate the odds and outcomes to trigger users making in-games purchases.

[vbnc]

A friend who works at a similar casual gaming company has told me exactly this. They a/b test giving the player a "run of luck", to see how that improves conversion.

[xux]

That sounds like every startup, ever.

[beedogs]

Becoming a publicly-traded company would only increase the odds of something like that happening, too, as they desperately try to increase revenue all the time.