Social casino games are slot machine and card games that look like a casino's games, but are played with virtual coins that are bought with real money and never paid out. So no one can win real money. They are a kind of free-to-play mobile game, played mostly on phones and on social media sites.
Many of these games are the same games that run on casino slot machines, made by the same companies. The software works in the same way. A random number generator decides each spin, and each game has a set payback percentage, as described in house edge and RNG. The difference is what the player can do with the coins. In a casino, or in an online casino game played for money, winnings can be taken out as money. In a social casino game, coins can only be spent on more spins inside the game.
Say a player in Florida, in America, downloads a social casino slot game. She receives 1,000,000 free coins, and each spin costs 10,000 coins. The game also gives her more free coins every few hours. After a week, she has used up her coins and wants to keep playing. So she buys 5,000,000 coins for $4.99. A win of 200,000 coins adds to her balance. But she can never sell those coins, or turn them back into dollars. The company earns from what players pay for coins, not from what they lose.
Because no money can be won, most American states do not treat these games as gambling. Courts in a few states have questioned this. App stores also have their own rules for these games. Regulators worry that the games teach young people the habits of gambling.
In India, the Online Gaming Act 2025 bans online games played for money, but allows social games in which no money can be won. Whether a particular game is on the allowed side of that line depends on how it is designed.
Most of the money comes from a small number of players who buy coins often. So these games use the same player analytics as other mobile games, and offer coins at the moments when a player is most likely to buy. Engineers in Bengaluru build social casino games for players in America.