Washington players secured a landmark $24.9 million jury verdict against High 5 Casino, adding to the growing sweepstakes casino class-action litigation. The players involved alleged High 5 Casino violated Washington gambling laws and profited unfairly from selling virtual currency.
Unlike other social casino operators that paid to settle before reaching a jury, High 5 chose to go to trial. After a four-day damages trial ending February 7, 2025, the eight-person Washington jury awarded more than $17.7 million in actual damages, plus an additional $7.1 million in enhanced damages. Read on for a breakdown of the plaintiffs’ argument.
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Deconstructing the plaintiff’s arguments from court filings
The central argument of the lawsuit was straightforward. High 5 games’ monetization system worked like gambling, even if it didn’t look like it on the surface. Here’s how the plaintiffs built their case, and how the court responded:
Paying to keep playing is wagering
Plaintiffs argued that even though players couldn’t win real cash from High 5’s games, the platform still forces them to spend real money on virtual currency to keep playing. Once the free Gold Coins ran out, the only way to continue was to purchase more Gold Coins, and without those purchases, gameplay would stop completely.
The Judge agreed. In June 2024, US District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright ruled on summary judgment that under Washington state law, gambling means wagering something of value on a game of chance. The jury found that buying virtual currency to extend playtime counted as “something of value.” So the “no-cashout” defense didn’t hold.
Virtual currency still have value
Regarding the virtual currency, High 5 argued the company designed them only for entertainment, and players couldn’t convert them to cash. High 5’s main claim was that because the games didn’t allow cash out, players weren’t gambling.
Plaintiffs pushed back on that idea and said virtual currency still hold real value because they let players keep playing longer instead of stopping when free currency run out. The court agreed with that view and decided that if currency give you more time in a game of chance, they count as something of value even without a cash-out button, and that interpretation is what led the jury to rule against High 5 Games. You can read our High 5 Casino review for more information on how the platform works.
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Profiting from addictive play
The lawsuit also claimed that High 5 Games deliberately profited from addictive gambling behaviors while working around traditional gambling rules. Plaintiffs argued that the whole game design pushed players to make repeated purchases the moment their free currency ran out, so spending money felt like the only way to keep playing.
High 5 countered that the games were just “purely for entertainment,” but after a four-day trial, the jury rejected that defense and found the company liable for how it ran its business.
Final words: How this affects the whole industry
The High 5 case is part of a larger legal trend in the social casino industry. Different legal cases are rising against social casinos that use virtual currencies as more plaintiffs argue that these platforms have misled and exploited them. For a long time, these platforms claimed that, because players cannot cash out on their platforms, they’re not gambling.
The question courts are now asking is, “Does the system require players to spend real money to keep playing casino-style games?” If the answer is yes, then the “no cash-out” defense fails. This ruling could lead to changes in how social casinos operate, as platforms built on this model now face the same legal scrutiny.
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