filmslayer:not only did they remove any outta pocket pay out , in the process and because of doing so they brought several states into playing premium games in witch they will get their rake . sure they risk losing the top10% players that have made their credits but now they have thousands , tens of thousands new players to fleece ....
This is significant. If removing the ability to exchange credits for gift cards (cash equivalents) in the Elite collection has enabled WGT to remove the skilled-base gaming restrictions from Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Illinois,
Louisiana, Montana, South Carolina, and South Dakota, then they have added 21% of the US population (~64 million people) to the potential market for MPCs and RGs.
Using the US Unique Visitors to WGT number of roughly 400,000, the change would enable MPCs and RGs for an estimated 80,000 players.
Even more significant is changes made to the world population. The FAQs no longer contain a statement restricting residents of Brazil, Argentina, the People's Republic of China, South Korea, and Japan from playing MPCs and RGs. If that is true, people from the listed countries are 25% of the worlds population! In Oct, 2011 the worlds population was 7 billion. So the change adds 1.75 billion people to the potential market for MPCs and RGs.
BTW, I obtained this info by comparing the FAQs (looks like it was updated) vs the T&Cs (still old version)
The bottom line as I see it, there were a very few top players (maybe 200?) who were able to accumulate enough credits to trade for a gift card. Serving that relatively small number restricted ~ 80,000 US players and potentially hundreds of thousands of world players from playing for credits.
As a resident of Arizona I can confirm this change. I now am enabled to play MPCs and RGs.
Could someone from Brazil, Japan, China, etc. confirm the change was made worldwide?