Jerome García April 9, 2025 3 min read

Legal Dispute Between Papaya Gaming and Skillz Intensifies

Papaya Gaming responded to Skillz's lawsuit and filed a separate legal claim, alleging it was impacted by an intentional defamatory campaign

Image Source: Shutterstock.com

Two providers of skill gaming platforms clashed in a legal battle that has now been ongoing for a couple of years. That’s the case for Papaya Gaming and Skillz, with the former being a mobile games platform that offers skill-based games, while the latter being a competitor within the same niche market.

Last year, Skillz filed a lawsuit against Papaya, alleging that it misled its customers by promoting player-versus-player games but offered player-versus-bot games. In August, Papaya responded to the lawsuit, dismissing the bot-use allegations by Skillz.

Papaya Files Claim Against Skillz

The aforementioned legal dispute is currently ongoing in New York’s Southern District Court. Responding to the allegations recently, Papaya accused Skillz of initiating a defamatory campaign by developing a “fabricated” website called 4FiarPlay.org, which allegedly helped spread false claims about competitors, such as the former.

The aforementioned website, Papaya claims, misled users into believing that Papaya rigs its games. That was Papaya’s response to the lawsuit by Skillz filed in New York. However, the former company took matters even further after recently filing a separate lawsuit in Virginia. Describing similar allegations, Papaya claimed that Skillz used the services of consultants from New York, as well as Chicago, who helped with the website that smeared its reputation via “phony customer testimonials,” as described by Casino.org.

Skillz Claims Competitors Use Bots, Deceive Players

The use of bots, or non-human players in skill-based games, was also subject to discussion during Skillz’s Q4 2024 earnings call in mid-March. At the time, Andrew Paradise, Skillz’s CEO, spoke about the platform’s proven fairness to players. The executive said that unlike Skillz, competitor brands and some of the biggest players in the skill-based games market do not uphold those values.

Paradise explained: “We believe international companies, including ABA Games, Papaya Gaming, and Voodoo Games use bots to deceive players in the United States and international markets into believing and competing against real human opponents when in fact they face predetermined gameplay or bots.”

Per the executive’s statement, such alleged manipulation enables competitor companies to alter “match results to their advantage,” resulting in losses in billions for American players. Paradise acknowledged the ongoing lawsuits, reaffirming Skillz’s intention to “pursue aggressive actions to safeguard” the fairness of the industry it pioneered.

As the lawsuits are ongoing, it is too soon to tell which company may prevail. The lack of a regulatory framework for skill-based games in particular, makes the legal battles even more difficult. It is not uncommon for such lawsuits to be resolved with an out-of-court settlement that may involve monetary compensation or other conditions that are usually not disclosed publicly.

Suggest a Correction

Jerome García

Journalist

Jerome brings a wealth of journalistic experience within the iGaming sector. His interest in the industry began after graduating from college, where he regularly participated in local poker tournaments. This exposure led him to the growing popularity of online poker and casino rooms. Jerome now channels all the knowledge he's accrued to fuel his passion for journalism, providing our team with the latest scoops online.

Legal April 9, 2025

Macquarie Experts Warn of Macau Casino Market Shifts

Legal Dispute Between Papaya Gaming and Skillz Intensifies

Legal April 9, 2025

Stake.us Hit with Class Action Lawsuit in Illinois

3 Comments

Amanda Tramontano
July 28, 2025 at 9:29 pm

Reply

How do we begin another lawsuit against papaya?!? They are definitely doing shady stuff and I have lost thousands do to the over addictive nature of the game with false promises and unrealistic expectations to win prizes.
Cheyne Hopson
August 18, 2025 at 9:08 am

Reply

Yeah I really don’t like the fact that I know what I’m doing when I’m playing my pool game and I know that the ball should behave a certain way and when it doesn’t or when it does things that it shouldn’t be doing because I didn’t even use enough power for it to do that or English for it to roll that way and I’m watching it intently and I know that there’s no way that that happened or when I line up the shot straight and miss it and it ain’t that it’s not even a difficult shot it’s pretty simple but it’s like the difference between missing a shot and making it and if I have that shit lined up straight and it somehow misses and then its the other “players” turn, makes me pretty suspicious like trying to convince me that I don’t know what the fuck I just saw. And people don’t get the feeling that they just got screwed by normal actions in a game like normal things happening I played the game enough to know how to control the ball and to know what shots I can make and I know how the ball should roll when I make them but, for some reason they don’t but it’s not me thats how I play my game. I’m at the kind of person that makes mistakes like scratching the 8 ball on the last shot.0 I’ve also been the kind of person that really picks up on when things aren’t right when something’s off, like for instance when players are making shots that they shouldn’t be making. And no, I’m not talking about simple shots. Obvious shit that makes you go hmmmmmmmm. Yeah so I’m missing shots that I should be making by all means cuz they’re simple and these other players are making incredibly difficult shots that no human could do that fast, I mean it’s not hard if you are paying attention to know whether or not you’re playing a bot because humans are messy but like art our style because we all have one innately like even if you never played you have a style that you shoot, but these damn bots dont, it’s like surgical. They don’t never overshoot or make shots like humans do just like that I’ve never played a game with a human opponent that used precision shot every time and just somehow managed to tap it just hard enough every time it’s just hard enough it’s like perfect every time and it’s a fucking dead giveaway. CEOs and people incorporations in this world are only concerned with fucking money they’re just greedy fucks
Cheyne Hopson
August 18, 2025 at 9:16 am

Reply

Oh and then yeah I’ll go report it cuz Its not all the time at all I mean it’s just occasionally I’ll know that I was definitely cheated because , even though it’s hard to explain what experiencing that’s like you just know when you’ve been screwed over. It’s insulting almost it’s like like temporarily dispending fucking reality like and now I’m in an alternate reality where apparently I don’t know how to play my game even though I spend quite a bit of time playing it. Not to mention, I grew up playing alot of pool, every summer and occasional holidays when I would go visit my aunt…..with a pool table . I like lived out there every summer but she only lived 45 minutes away too so we’re not talking about across the country here. But yeah I would just play a game and it would feel suspiciously like I just got cheated because I’ve seen the other player do some shit that they shouldn’t have been able to do you know that the just that feeling that pit of despair that forms in your stomach when you just feel like you’ve been screwed over and then I go report this person and they always like like immediately respond back like like yeah this person was cheating I’m pretty sure because I’ve been around for a long time and I know what it looks like when somebody’s cheating. And I’d have proof If I had screen recorder running on the last one but no they tell me oh no not nothing out of the ordinary here I’m like did you even see what just happened is there a replay where you can go replay that match and watch like you can convince yourself but I know what the fuck I saw.