dotblu blog

Recent changes to BluBet

You may have noticed some significant changes to BluBet recently. One of the most notable changes is that we no longer allow you to participate on bets when your BluBet debt is higher than 100,000 BluBucks. A very small fraction of our active users are in that situation. Even if they were willing to pay money to get out of debt, it would just cost too much to do so. I will address the issue of those users in a later part of this post.

First I would like to address why we made these sudden changes and explain our position. Currently, BluBet is a good game, but it must be great in order to ensure that we survive as a game that everyone wants to play. As it was, the game wasn't challenging enough for many users. Since winning and losing bets made little difference, BluBucks as a virtual currency didn’t carry any value even within the world of BluBet. Ideally, your BluBet Net Worth should represent how good you are at the BluBet game.

Please understand that BluBet is a business and must find a way to become profitable. Otherwise the company that you and I love will cease to exist. We will continue to evolve BluBet to make it more interesting to different groups of people as well as turn it into a sustainable business.

Here are some of my responses to your questions:

Why limit at 100,000 BluBucks?

We didn't want to stop our loyal players from enjoying BluBet for free. If you choose to participate for free, you should continue to be able to do so. However, you will need to expend a little bit of effort to win games and bets. This means that there are no more huge gains without any risk. If you continue to lose, you can always contact our trusty and helpful top users for a pointer or two. We are a great community and a big family. Most of our users are happy to help. 100,000 was a statistical number to minimize the users who can’t participate.

How do I continue to play BluBet for free?

• You will need to play to win.
• Check the ante and your balance when participating in bets.
• Don’t bet more than you can afford. Don’t spend all your debt; wait for some bets to settle before jumping into more.
• If you don't want to take risks with difficult bets, you can always participate by commenting. However, remember that with higher risk comes higher reward.
• Watch settlement dates on bets and participate on bets that are settling soon.
• Come up with a strategy and stick with it. This is a game and it is easier to win than you might think.
• If you owe more than you can afford, you can always start over by creating a new account. Make sure to change your email address and delete your existing account afterward.

Why don't you give some users amnesty?

We carefully considered this option. A large amount of complexity is introduced when you consider the bets that are in play. If we clear some users’ balances, their ranking will increase dramatically due to their bets in play. This wouldn’t be fair to members that earned their ranking by playing the game fairly. We are still weighing several options here but we don’t have a working solution yet. In the meantime, you have the option of starting over by creating a new account as I mentioned before.

Why are you guys so greedy and charging money to play?

It’s not greed, it’s a business. However, we do not expect everyone to pull out their credit card and pay us for BluBet. We don’t expect to turn profitable in just a couple of months. To tune and improve BluBet, we are charging a very small amount to a small fraction of users that are willing to pay for a service that they love. It costs a lot to run a service like BluBet. We will do our best to make a major portion of our service free for those who love our service but cannot afford to pay. Also, we will continue to add and expand our service so that you’ll be happy and willing to pay for some of the value that we provide.

I hope that I have addressed some of your concerns. Over the weekend, I saw some great community support from users all over the world. This is a very unique value that no other online community can duplicate. I thank you all for loving our service and our community. I appreciate your continued support.

Yours truly,

Song Kim
CEO, BluBet, Inc.

Things are moving in the BluBet Store!

There's some big changes happening in the BluBet Store today.  We've added a lot of new items that you can purchase -- new landscapes with arctic views, the Great Wall of China, fantasy castles with fire-breathing dragons, new houses like airports, party houses, and haunted mansions, many new cars, and much more, and they're all animated.  Even the old store items have gotten an animated facelift. Check out the new items in the BluBet Store

But, as always, you have to have BluBucks from all your bet and game challenge winnings to purchase all the new items available. 

Running out of BluBucks?  No problem. We've introduced a whole new section where you can buy Tokens to purchase BluBucks or BluBet Store items.  Also, some store items will only be available to users with Tokens.

Tokens are available at a rate of $5 for 50 tokens, $10 for 105 tokens (a 5% discount) or $20 for 220 tokens (a 10% discount).  Each token is worth 2000 BluBucks, so for $20 you can purchase 440,000 BluBucks!  You can convert Tokens to BluBucks at any time, but never BluBucks to Tokens.  You can buy items in the BluBet Store with your Tokens without converting them to BluBucks.

You can purchase Tokens with a PayPal account by going to the Token store here or by following the links on your dashboard or the front page.  Don't have a PayPal account?  No problem, you can create one here.

There are also some new restrictions on borrowing BluBucks from BluBet.  You can still freely borrow BluBucks, and you never have to pay them back, but if you've borrowed more than 100,000 BluBucks, you will no longer be able to bet and play game challenges.  You will still be able to play the games, leave comments, and talk to your friends if you owe more than 100,000 BluBucks.  You can check your Balance and pay back BluBucks from your stats page.

If you have any questions about BluBucks, Tokens, the store or anything else you can email feedback@blubet.com or ask the House.  Good luck and happy BluBetting!

Ranks and Classes and Algorithms oh my!

As you probably know, we recently launched games. Whenever you play a game, we save your highest score. Now, your profile shows your rank. So, everyone will be able to see that you rawk at Air Pop but aren't so good at Snake. (I admit, it's a hard game!)

Also, we're adding Classes. Class is also based on your highest score and is a grouping of users we algorithmically determine are at your same skill level in a certain game. You'll not only see the class of a person in their profile, but also in the game challenges they create. We've also added rules to our website code that require you to be in the same class or lower of a public challenge's creator in order to accept the challenge. This helps keep people who are awesome at games from mercilessly beating people that still need a little more practice.

Let us know what you think of Classes by talking to the House (he loves all your questions!) at feedback@blubet.com or sending a message to him.

Clearly ScottyPip is super good at Air Pop.

Why was my bet deleted?

We've been asked a few times lately why a particular bet has been deleted, or why a bet may be deleted.  BluBet has a team of editors monitoring the site 24 hours a day to make sure that all the created bets are following the rules.  This helps us prevent inappropriate content from remaining on the site, as well as prevent cheating by insuring that all the bets are fair.

There are several reasons why a bet may be deleted. Bets that are repeatedly flagged will be examined for possible deletion, as well as any of the following:

• Bets with strong sexual content and/or nudity (Users who post nudity will also be deleted.)
• A bet without any real choices, or two choices that are identical.
• Bets that are hateful or harmful to other users
• Any attempts to cheat to gain BluBucks ("Free points!", etc.)
• A bet with extremely bad spelling and grammar to a point where it is not understandable.
• Simple math bets (1+1, 2+2)
• Prediction bets that allow users to affect the outcome by participating. ("How many players will this bet have?" "How many comments will this bet have?")
• A bet that is not in the proper category according to the rules. (Prediction, Majority Wins, Quiz.)  Please see this question for information on the proper categories.

Unfortunately due to the volume of bets created every day on BluBet, we cannot contact every user that has had a bet removed with an explanation.  We regret that occasionally we do make mistakes in removing particular bets, and work diligently to correct mistakes and ensure that only the bets that violate these rules are removed.  If you feel your bet was removed in error, please do contact us and be as detailed as possible about the bet that was removed so we can either provide an explanation, or issue a correction to the editing staff so that the problem will not be repeated.  We appreciate all the feedback that we've received, and it is helping us make BluBet better all the time.

If you have any concerns, questions, or comments, please feel free to contact the Admin at feedback@blubet.com or the BluBet House

Pacman!

Now you can play the classic game of Pacman on BluBet! Control Pacman using the arrow keys to navigate the maze and eat all the food to proceed to the next level.  But watch out for the ghosts! The ghosts will follow you throughout the maze and if they run into Pacman, he dies. You have three lives to get through as many levels as you can.

You can score bonus points and get the ghosts out of your way by eating the discs and cherries. After you eat one of those, the ghosts will frown and run away from you, and you can chase them and eat them, sending them back to their original position. As you get farther in the game, there will be more ghosts and it will be harder to stay away from them. Just keep chomping up the Pacman food to rack up points and achieve a high score!

As always if you have any suggestions or questions about Pacman, games, or anything else on BluBet, feel free to contact us.  Good luck!