And you would be wrong if it weren't for your parenthetical hedge. Using Betable, it's completely legal for any developer to offer real money gambling in their games to any players who are not in the US and a few other minor jurisdictions (in terms of market size).
It's a big world out there. In fact, the market out side of the US is huge. Even Zynga has more players outside of the US than inside of the US (60% Ex-US). The opportunity to go into the Ex-US market where one can make 300X more ARPU/month than in the US is massive.
@MostAwesomeDude I think you pointed out a major issue with social games in general, which is that across the industry, free-to-pay conversion rates are only about 2% and player only generate about $1 ARPU/month, meaning, to turn your game into a viable business, you need to have a ton of players or as you put it, "...you really want as many potential wallets as possible."
There are a few new monetization methods out there such as Kiip that you should check out, although I can't speak for how well they work.
One new monetization method that I can speak for, which is proven to work are, real-money gambling and betting mechanics, which produce monthly ARPU in the neighborhood of $300/month -- that's 300X better than the other monetization options currently available to game devs. I know the knee jerk reaction is to think you can't do that without a license and that obtaining a license is nearly impossible, both of which are true, but Betable (developers.betable.com) just launched a real-money gambling engine that hosts and operates all gambling code on behalf of a game dev, enabling them to piggy-back on Betable's licenses, so they don't have to get their own.
FULL DISCLOSURE, I'M THE FOUNDER OF BETABLE. Sorry for the self-promotions, but given the current state of game monetization methods available to devs, I thought it was important for me to jump into the conversation and make people aware of what else is out there. Hope this is helpful.
Strange to me that people are talking about better ways to serve ads in games and apps instead of alternative revenue streams to ads. Ads suck no matter how you position them in your app.
I don't think they forgot that. There is a big world outside of the US that CAN gamble and bet LEGALLY online. Using Betable (http://developers.betable.com/developers/signin), game devs can reach the massive Ex-US audience (remember, 60% of Zynga's traffic is outside of the US), and monetize them >100X better (traditional online casinos generate about $300/month per player on average) than they currently do using virtual goods, virtual currency, etc.
The legal issues are solved by Betable (http://developers.betable.com/developers/signin). Betable already has gambling licenses which have been issued to them by the UK Gambling Commission (http://bit.ly/mSX3kN). They act as the backend to your game and handle all gambling related activity and compliance. Because the game just acts as a pass-through front end, and never handles any of the gambling activity, it is not a gambling operator, and therefore, it doesn't need a license. Instead, Betable acts as the operator and is licensed.
Betable supports virtual currency, so if you wanted to market your game to players in the US, you can create a virtual currency version of your game, market it everywhere in the world, and only expose the real-money gaming functionality to players in legal jurisdictions (e.g. those outside of the US, Turkey and Holland).
Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars were breaking the law. That's not what Betable is proposing. Had those two companies stayed outside of the US like Betfair and many other multi-billion dollar real-money gambling and betting companies do (it's a big world out there), then they would have been fine.
Real-money gambling historically generates over 100X more ARPU than typical social gaming revenue streams, so even with that rev split, game developers stand to make much more money than they currently do. Also, unlike other platforms that game developers are sharing their revenues with (iOS, AdMob, etc.), Betable is processing all of the transactions and resolutions related to real-money gambling play. In other words, Betable is much more hands on with helping the developer make money.