Very much appreciate this article, yes 100% on point and I am sooo pleased that the legal field is on top of this. I probably should post my case on a different forum, perhaps you can help. My problem lies within the “right to refuse service” realm, meaning, how a business can accept payment from a user they have previously banned, then, after providing the virtual goods purchased, ban them again before the user can even apply them? If I am banned from a store, wouldn’t the store refuse my presence within the store or, hello, my money at the register? Don’t they have an obligation to mitigate damages? Or is it perfectly OK to say, “you can’t shop here so after checkout, keep the receipt, but we are confiscating your valid purchases on your way out, thank you, come again”. Is that legal? To me, it seems like organized crime.

It’s not 100% on point but this article might still be interesting http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=755884

I would like to add that over the course of the 4 years, I ranked #20 in overall popularity amongst tens of thousands of players, I was a “whale”; I never violated their rules for pictures I posted, language I used, cheating, or adverse interactions with other players. I was a MODEL player and I have email correspondence from this company’s customer service that confirms this dated 3 days prior to the ban. My total spend on this app is over $80,000 USD to date and I have multiple friends who have spent equal, if not substantially more, than me. I know every single individual who pays this company’s payroll. We all were assigned “VIP” reps. We want what we paid for.

p.s. thank you for shedding light on this extremely problematic business practice, hence my heated comments. This app was not like this prior to being purchased by Big Fish Games, but Churchill Downs has made it even more disgusting. I originally downloaded this app when it was Card Ace Casino, by Self Aware Games (Oakland, CA) in 2010. They have never required an authenticated login, they used your device ID/IP Geo-location info to log you in. I developed rapports with the 23 employees before the acquisitions, they have systematically replaced all the original developers since then. I have every email correspondence, BBB case details, purchase transactions, receipts, devices used, app store accounts and profiles dating from 2010 until now in hopes the law catches up with this type of tech fraud.