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Play Coin Desk / The closed economy
Where the coins go

An economy with one door, and it faces inwards

Coins can be spent on the games, on items that exist only inside the product, and often on gifts to other players. Every one of those paths ends inside the same wall. This page is about what the wall is made of and what it is for.

Open the partner accountStart with the six clauses
Bought: priced, spendable, not redeemableGranted: unpriced, the only route outNo route: no sale price exists
Direct answerInside a play-money product the coins buy virtual items, cosmetic upgrades, event entries and gifts to other accounts, and each of those purchases is final: the item is licensed to the account, it cannot be sold, transferred for value or exchanged back into coins or money, and it disappears with the account. Because the item is priced in coins and the coins are priced in bundles, the money price of a shop item depends on the rate of the bundle you buy - which is why the same item can cost materially different sums in money on the same day.

What a closed economy is

An economy is closed when value can enter from outside and cannot leave. Money enters at the bundle screen at a published rate; coins circulate inside; items and gifts are bought with coins; and no transaction anywhere in the system pays out money except the grant-and-redeem route, which is a separate promotional channel rather than a trade. Nothing about that is hidden: the terms say the currency has no monetary value, transfer is prohibited, and items are licensed rather than owned. A closed economy is a legitimate design, and it is the design that makes the game catalogue affordable to run.

What it is not is a market. In a market, a second price emerges - what someone else will pay - and that price is what disciplines the first one. Here there is no second price, by contract, so the value of a balance is whatever the shop's coin prices say it is, and the shop's coin prices are set by the operator on its own schedule.

Three things coins are spent on

  1. PlayThe games themselves: a coin stake per spin or per hand, with the outcome priced the way the game is priced. This is where most of the balance goes, and it is the only spending that has any chance of producing more coins.
  2. Items and upgradesCosmetic and functional items that exist inside the product: skins, avatars, stakes tiers, entry tickets. Priced in coins, licensed to the account, not transferable, and worth nothing outside the product by the product's own terms.
  3. Gifts and social spendingCoins spent on or sent to another account. This is the transaction most likely to be restricted and most likely to be reversed as prohibited play, because it is the one transaction in a closed economy that looks like a transfer of value between people.
Worked example - the same item, two bundle rates (illustrative) Shop item, priced by the product at 20,000 coins.
Bought through the smallest bundle, at 1,000 coins per GBP 1: 20,000 ÷ 1,000 = GBP 20.00.
Bought through the largest bundle, at 1,600 coins per GBP 1: 20,000 ÷ 1,600 = GBP 12.50.
Difference in money for the identical item: GBP 7.50, or 37.5% of the higher price - (20.00 − 12.50) ÷ 20.00.
Sale price of the item afterwards: none. It is licensed to the account and cannot be transferred, so its money value on exit is GBP 0.00 at either price.
That is the closed economy in one line: the discount is real, the asset is not, and the second figure does not change when the first one improves.

Why gifts are the interesting case

Gifting looks like generosity and functions like a payment, which is why it is the transaction most tightly ringed by rules. If coins could be moved between accounts freely, the closed economy would acquire a grey second market: coins bought at one rate, moved to another account, and either played under that account's rules or exchanged outside the product for something else. Products close that route in the terms, and the prohibition is normally drafted as prohibited play whose consequence is forfeiture of the affected balance. A reader who receives a large gift of coins from an account they do not know is receiving a liability, not a gift.

Where this page sits against the rest of the network

A desk in this network covers the supply chain behind the games - which studio built a title, which approval it holds, which build the operator runs. This page deliberately does not repeat any of that: here the game is only the thing a balance is spent on. And a desk covers the data held about a gambling account, which is a different question again from what the account's balance can be spent on. What is specific to this page is the wall: what the coins are for, and the fact that there is exactly one direction in which they can travel.