Online Games Firm SkillJam Acquires WorldWinner for $23 Million

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 20, 2006 - 7:54am.
Newton, Mass. - SkillJam, a Los Angeles-based provider of "skill-gaming" technology and unit of FUN Technologies, has acquired WorldWinner.com, a Massachusetts-based online game company, for $23 million. WorldWinner.com hosts more than 10 million games and awards millions of dollars in prizes every month, with games in five categories: cards, words, arcade, strategy and sports. Last year, the company had revenue of $10.67 million, a loss of $680,000 million and net assets of $3.9 million, the company said.
http://www5.sys-con.com/read/196283.htm
http://www.worldwinner.com



Comments

I am very disapointed with

I am very disapointed with Worldwinner. They took over Skilljam and at first I was excited...but now at seeing the reality am very sad. I used to love Skilljam, they had great features including avatars you could custom design and they had alot of games. A very personable and smart site. I thought worldwinner would jazz it up a bit...but no not quite the case.

Now with Skilljam "merging" with Worldwinner there is nothing of Skilljam on their site! No avatars...and worldwinner barely has any games! They didn't bring any of Skilljam's site along. It seems the only thing Worldwinner has done is taken all of Skilljams players/customers! They are slimey.

Coming from Skilljam to Worldwinner is a big letdown. Skilljam was a great gaming site and now it seems there is nothing left of it. Why didnt they bring on Skilljams games??? This was a big misguidance, as they said it would all be carried over. Even our token accounts... which weren't!!

Are they going to change this? I hope so.

Am very very bummed out...I will not be playing with Worldwinner anymore. I am sorry I dont want to be negative but I am very disapointed. I just think this site(Worldwinner) is a big wet limp noodle..... why all the "big" hype? There is nothing exciting or beautiful about it!

Arrrrghh

Anyone??

At least you are obviously

At least you are obviously able to log in to the site. I had money in my Skilljam account but the worldwinner site does not recognise my email address, therefore I am unable to access my account. It wasn't a lot of money but it's the principle of the matter. There was no warning for members that this was happening, in fact I received an email from skilljam today inviting my to participate in a dynotmite tournament.

Skilljam to worldwinner

I was a daily player on skilljam and a gambling one as well to the point that as a Canadian I received a tax statement from the States. Since worldwinner took over from skilljam I have been unable to play due to the fact they claim never to have heard of me. I have sent E-mails and received replies but nothing has been done to fix my dilema. to make matters worse the even took a 10.00 deposit from me but still will not let me in to play. Our household actually has 2 accounts both with money in them but? I am truly disappointed with this issue and feel that I have been lied to and robbed.

worldwinner is a scam

i have 5 people in my house each of us started world winner accounts and my bf won over 200 dollars and they will not send it to us because there are multiple accounts. so everyone that paid money to compete and lost to him got there money takin for no reason worldwinner thinks they can keep it. i am suing them in small claims court. but whoever posted this is right they leave no contact number or anything

World Winner steeling money?

I am having problem with them. I've been a member for a while and I spend ten dollars here and there, but ofcourse I'll lose any winnings I get. Finally I decide to cash in ten dollars and that would've have left my account with a balance of $20 dollars so I here Live Help is telling me since I deposited $10 that day and withdrew $10 it cancel eachother out. Well my credit card still shows a minus of $10 and no credit? And why did my account balance go from $30 to $20. Does this make any sense to anyone else. Am I missing something? Wondering how many others are having this problem?

world winner

World winner is a big let down. Dynomite is my favorite, the game I really enjoy playing. But since playing on world winner I was able to play dynomite for the first 2 days, since it has failed to download. I followed all of the technical advice but to no avail did it help me. I have e-mailed customer service many times, but they don't respond. This site is not very customer friendly.

Just don't get to the point

Just don't get to the point where you are able to play Dynomite (or any of the other games) well. After a couple weeks of playing Dynomite after the merger I was told that because I knew how to play the game I would not be allowed to do so any longer. They have cleverly hidden their true purpose behind a "fair match rating" or some such nonsense.

Here's the scam. Let's say that Dick and Jane both put $50.00 into their accounts. If Jane is the superior player, she will eventually get all of Dick's money (minus the per game money the site takes ... which on average appears to be around 20%).

If they each play 50 $1.00 games, and Jane wins 80% of them, then after the last game is settled Dick will have $16.00 and Jane will have $64.00 (which means that Jane made $14.00 while the site made $20.00 ... seems excessive to me).

But now let's say that Dick is a little more evenly matched (not much) and Jane can only win 60% of the games. Now once the games are settled Dick has $32.00 and Jane has $48.00? Even though Jane is winning consistently, she is still losing money over time.

This doesn't even take into account the "fixed payout" tournaments. I just saw one today that has $1.25 entry fee and a total payout of $300.00 ... what a scam. Let's say only 500 people play in the tournament and on average they play only twice. This is 1000 entries for an intake of $1250.00 ... of which they return only $300.00! This is an outrageous 76% fee they are charging!

Just trying to spread the knowledge.

UABJ

Glad I read this page first.

Glad I read this page first. When looking over their site, I saw nothing about entry fees. That's insane. Since I'm mainly looking for fun, I'm content with playing free entries at King.com. It's friendly, fun (avatars, jewels, trophies), and simple. If I do use a fee entry, it's only 65 cents. When I've lost my connection or had a technical problem, I was refunded my entry fee immediately without asking. Plus I was sent an email stating that. It's a friendly environment, whereas other sites seem so impersonal. Plus I like learning a little about the people from other countries. But that's just my own experience. When it comes to "winning" money, I feel better putting that energy into running my own business. :-)

world winner is a great disappointment

Yes, I am extremely disappointed. Only very very few games are there now, no more major games or most of my favorites anymore. The accounting system is also very unclear, they don't show a statement at all now! Feeling also very insecure, too. The friendliness of gaming is gone. This has become a very serious gambling site just like all the rest. The Fun of Skilljam is gone. I guess I will withdraw from playing. REAL should think seriously about this change of just deserting their faithful old members....

I got ripped off by Skilljam

I got ripped off by Skilljam and Worldwinner too. They took the money from my paypal accout..then nothing...couldn't play, couldn't get my money back, couldn't even get any response from customer service. They took the money immediately from paypal but wouldn't allow me to play. I have no recourse other than to warn others. Skilljam is a scam. Worldwinner is a scam. I thought it was safe since it is listed as "AOL Games"..but buyer beware. I would suggest everyone who got ripped off post as often as you can, wherever you can, so others will know.

Skilljam ripped me off

I also got ripped off by SkillJam this past week. I made two $20 deposits that were processed by Paypal and posted to my bank, but Skilljam did not acknowledge these deposits nor my several attempts at contacting their customer care department. They also don't answer the phone. I'm not sure what can be done, I have a six month membership I just shelled out $40 bucks for so at this point I'm out $80 bucks. I'm going to continue to write, call and do whatever I can to get my hard earned cash back. I have always connected to SkillJam through AOL Games so World Winner says I don't exist to them. I don't think I'll ever play at any other gaming sites because of this. I encourage anyone who has experienced an issue like this to post as well.

I totally agree - I joined

I totally agree - I joined thru aol and have been trying to stop the $14.95 debit from paypal for about a year now with no luck. Each side tells me to see the other side. Getting very frustrated. Haven't played there in over a year. Don't even no my logon/password anymore!

what a complete con this

what a complete con this worldwinner site is they dumped all our points and have absolutely crap games none of the great ones skilljam had and thanks skilljam for telling us of this change i will never use this site as it is crap crap crap crap and i hope noone else will to then lets see how much they lose hahahahahhaha

world wide games

I tried some of the'SAME' games skill jam had and believe me there was no similarity as to the rules or the play. They are horrible.I asked for a complete withdrawal of my $48.00, we'll see how honest World Wide is. Anyone know where those great 'skill jam games' can be found? good luck to all my fellow 'screwed players'.

Other online gaming sites

Everyone should try www.king.com ... although it's not perfect it's much better than world winner. There is a healthy selection of games and big tournaments every 3 days. Anybody else know of another good game site out there (with a lot of traffic)? Keep spreading the word!

Other sites

I have played skillgames on many sites such as Skilljam, Worldwinner, GameAccount and King. I must say that King is my favorite. Great support and many games to choose from. There is few games I miss there such as Dynomite and Big Money but there are other great games that Worldwinner doesnt have. You should give it a try. Check out aboutskillgames.com for more info...

i've played on all three...

I prefer worldwinner now. Their version of dynomite (my favorite) is a lot better than on skilljam, and they have scrabble. I play to win, and the prizes are much better than sj or king. I played on king a few times, until they suddenly decided that they don't offer service in my 'region' and locked me out of their site. I'm still trying to get them to give back all the money that was in my account, and my 'region' (California) is not even listed as not allowed on their site.

Open your eyes

Don't you guys get it? SkillJam and Worldwinner are malware creators, advertisers, con players, you name it. They are not really making fun gaming sites, they are out for money and when that dries up or they get put out of business because they are destroying computers world wide, they move on.

God; you think you have bad

God; you think you have bad stories about skilljam I bet mine beats you all. Skilljam took my money over and over and over again...my cash games were interupted more than not and rarely if ever was I issued a refund but recieved this "we are sorry but our site is having technical difficulties right now" "the problem will be corrected within 20 minutes" In the mean time their site tells you to continue playing other cash games...having gotten entirely fed up I did lose it and told them in so uncertain terms BUT no swearing ! ! ! With money still in my account their site's supposed CEO told me my account was suspended for upsetting his employee's ??? NOW I can't even play world winner games and can not find any games other than King...Skilljam sites are all CROOKS and now they are trying to monopolize all on line games sites

Worldwinner is a ripoff!

What a disappointment that skilljam is no longer available. I wish I would have read these complaints before I invested any money. I found it impossible to win overall. There is a poor selection of games and the odds are against you. They don't match skill level and the prizes are horrible. All in all, save your money and don't play worldwinner

report them

If every one reported them to the Attorney Generals office in Mass, they would do something about it. Call tomorrow!

class action lawsuit

I have had it with worldwinner scamming money of peoples hard earned wages . This site is brutal , they think they can do whatever it want , they think there some mighy and powerfull . Its time that this site be shut down and I an starting a class action lawsuit . If you feel you have been discriminated , abused , addicted , defrauded of money , or whatever . this site has gotten away with to much and its time the illegal activities be stopped . To join the class action email me at . laura@nl.rogers.com

Dodgey brothers Inc

I actually found a new game on Skilljam recently, and was pretty good at it. Started winning some money so I entered the tournaments again and again and again till my accounts money had been used up. My scores were very high... and I won a little money. That was last week. This week I cant even find the game in skilljam and I have a ton of incompleted tournaments that will never be completed because no-one else can enter them if there is no game on the site any longer. Obviously we are not supposed to find a game that we are skilled at and start to earn a little...

??? worldwinner anomolies

I've experienced game errors of giving me a score of 1 when I play hearts and therefore my opponent wins the money. The tech support is generic info. of uninstalling shockwave, etc. But the funny thing is, I've have never had any game errors on any other games probably because I'm still novice player. I agree that if you begin to win some they match you with someone that you have no chance of beating. The fairmatching is a joke. The times they have credited me in the games I won were for game credits and not for real money. They told me in last email basically I needed to resolve it on my end because they would not continue with game credits. I've disabled everything that could conflict and other suggestions they told me.

I thought I was alone in my WW and SJ plight.....

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this page, as I thought that I was the only one getting ripped off by Skill Jam. You all know that they bought out World Winner and voila...all my tokens and cash balance mysteriously disappeared within one day. I cannot recieve customer support, so therefore chalked it up as a loss. Now, when I play on other skill jam sites, my high scores on Dynomite don't get tabulated, and I end up with a score of zero. Funny, this has only happened on all 4 instances of scoring over 150,000 in Dynomite. Weird huh? Coincidental? I think not. The Jam Master level point system is much, much harder to obtain points than in the intermediate level. Fair? No. I'm all for a class action lawsuit.....

How in the world did you

How in the world did you manage to get 150,000 in Dynomite? The highest I was able to get is around 70,000 and most of the time it's 60,000. I can't seem to figure it out. I tried everything and came to the conclusion that a score that high must be rigged. And when I play, WW puts me in with these 100,000 level players. Talk about Fairmatching. What a scam and rip off!!!

Check youtube.com, someone

Check youtube.com, someone posted a video capture of a Dynamite game on Worldwinner.com. I believe the score was 1.5 million points. Bounce the eggs off the wall and shoot above line of sight, rotate the colours to eventually clear a path and cause a massive collapse. Definitely changes my view of games on Worldwinner.com. You can assume people are using bots, macros and such to cheat, but a video showing a game can be won by a clever trick, discourages me from paying for games. Currently I only do their Daily Freeplay and don't deposit money.

Worldwinner rip offs

I played many games online and got good. Finally won close to $1,000 and decided to withdraw the winnings in order to pay some big bills we got. I had managed to withdraw smaller amounts of winnings in the past: $20-$30 etc and wasn't anticipating any issue. Now 4 months later I still haven't seen the check they promised. Can't get any response from them to numerous e-mails. No telephone number etc.!!!! Total scam. But guess what folks: Fortune magazine just came out with an article about them being the most profitable online gaming site!!!! Yeah- no kidding... we lose; they take our money... we win; they take our money.... not a bad gig if your conscience can take it!!!!!

I have had this exact same

I have had this exact same thing happen! I Googled worldwinner + scam and came upon this site... I have sent them countless emails and had several IM chats w/ their online help. The check they owe me is only for $50, but as some people have said, it's a matter of principle at this point. I've probably shelled out close to a couple thousand dollars by now on their site. I know, I'm a sucker... took me awhile to come to the realizations others have had about the alleged "fair matching" and other b.s. --like consistently being beat by 5 or 10 points, esp. when you get a killer (read: unbeatable) score. anyway, if anyone has any tips as to how to get a response out of these guys, let me know. I just threatened them w/ FTC and CA AG complaints... we'll see if that works, but somehow I doubt it.

worldwinner mojo

I have been a member for 5 years and addicted big time! However, the games are becoming more and more unfair. If you complain they send you an automated generic reply! The fair playing rank is BS. I see uncanny scores that would be impossible with the set up I was getting. People are not getting the same puzzles. This is obvious. So how can a game be considered fair when someone gets good letters to make high scoring words and someone else gets mostly low scoring letters and vowels! I'd love to hear from anyone having the same problems. There needs to be an investigation into this company and their operations.

Worldwinner.com is committing fraud

You need to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office for the state that you live in so that this ripoff website gets investigated for deceitfully claiming to be providing skill gaming. There is no skill matching at all and the website is completely unfair. You are 100% correct when you stated that each player in a competition is not receiving the same board to play. In skill gaming, each player receives the same exact board, otherwise, it is a game of chance or gambling. There are certain players that win every single game that they play with scores that are not humanly possible. Everytime you send them a message via either there website or thru e-mail, worldwinner gives the same bs scripted response to everything. There are currently 24 complaints against this website on the Better Business Bureau's website at www.bbb.org. Worldwinner.com is a scam and is commmitting fraud! Make sure you file your complaint with the Attorney General's office and pass on the word to all the other players that have lost tons of money!!!!

Re: worldwinner mojo

I'm of the opinion that for most games I play, the boards/games we get are similar to what others get, at least for Dynomite and Royal Flush. Sometimes I think the minesweeper boards they give are similar, but other times I think they're very different, and anyone who has played minesweeper much knows some boards are MUCH easier than others. I do agree that their fair rank is bogus. I get game anomalies in any game I finish with a score above a certain point (400,000 for Dynomite, 1980-ish for minesweeper, 5275 or so for Royal Flush). Then I cannot play for a few days while they 'investigate' to see if I cheated, all while I lose any revenue I might have obtained from playing that game. The last two times it happened for Dynomite, I was actually awarded first place prize in the tourneys (though my score was never listed in my top 10), but for the other games, I merely received refunds for the entrence fees. The most rediculous case was today in a Dynomite tournament, 3 players received game anomalies. Both myself and another player managed outrageous scores (haven't heard back from the third player about his score, but it was probably high too). We got good scores, yet we're the ones being punished... I've responded to emails that said to reply if I had any questions, but have yet to receive a reply.

After I made $6000 profit in

After I made $6000 profit in one year playing Swap-It they stopped me from winning more by ranking me above everyone else so there isn't anyone to play. They treated me the same as the person above when I got a high score but then one day they no longer placed me back in normal competitions. So, no more winning money for me. They never respond to e-mails with any answers that make sense and if I e-mail a second time they just ignore it. This site should be shut down for cheating everyone out of their money.

I've played on both SkillJam

I've played on both SkillJam and Worldwinner and sorry to change the subject, but what do all of the rest of you do about reporting this on your "April return" for t-a-x-e-s? I can't seem to find any information anywhere about being able to have a deduction on my return for all the entry fees that didn't result in winnings?

April Filing

Since I came out with more money than I spent this last year, I just reported how much money I withdrew from the site. I.e., if I spent $2 to play twice in a tourney, and won $3.50 total from the tournament, I'd only report $1.50 as income. Then I pretty much ignored my total winnings, total entry fees, etc, and just looked at the withdraw summary. I don't suppose anyone knows of another website besides WW that has Dynomite cash games of some form?

Meh

I've made 300, and only lost 50. I don't see what the big deal is, other than they take a long time to give you your money. I think some of you may be forgetting that there are people who sit at home and play these games so much that they basically can't lose. Think: Halo 2 online or World of warcraft, and how there is always some single player whose life revolves around that game to the point of insanity. Unless you can beat them, you'll probably lose a fair chunk of the games.

Didn't pay AND cost me money

I made a request for withdrawal of my measly $30 winnings, and they actually sent me a cheque. It bounced! I have emailed them several times about this as the NSF fee was more than the cheque was worth but they've come up with some story about how they're "looking into it". This was over 6 months ago. I have seen neither my winnings nor reimbursement for the NSF.

Worldwinner's Competition Design Looks Like A Scam

Worldwinner can easily decide who will win each tourney because they can group you with competitors or by yourself AFTER you post your score. Because: #1 You don't know who your opponents are when you enter a tourney. #2. For the smaller tourneys, you don't know if you'll be getting in a game that is already underway or if you are the first one to compete. After I realized this and after I started losing more than winning, I took my $40 in winnings and quit.

SCAM

I play dynomite as a paying customer. Play is not on a competitive basis as should be when you are paying to play. I have played the same game in repetition as quickly as I can to watch results. I can have 6 open games. I often lose all and always within a 100 point loss, never in timed order of play. It is absolutely the biggest SCAM I have ever been involved in. This website is surely viable of a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT. This is controlled computerized gaming guaranteed for you to lose. Not based on competitive skill. BE WARY!!!!! This is my opinion and how I feel based on my experiences with World Winner games.

WorldWinner

This outfit is a scam! You win like crazy in the free games. Then when you "upgrade," you lose and lose some more. Switch back to free games and you win, win, win! Way to go World Winner.

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