Idle Games' Fresh Deck Poker.
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GSN’s acquisition of Idle Gaming shows the state of social casino games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Sony’s GSN Games casual gaming division announced yesterday that it had acquired Idle Gaming, the creator of the social game Fresh Deck Poker. Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but Adam Krejcik of Eilers Research estimated the value of the deal was about $10 million.

That’s not a great outcome for Idle Gaming, which raised $19 million to date. But it suggests that the larger social casino game business isn’t quite what it used to be. It’s still a $2.7 billion market, according to market analyst firm App Annie. But 52 percent of the market share is now in the hands of the top five companies, including Caesars Interactive, IGT, Zynga, Sony, and Churchill Downs.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.