Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
Pennsylvania's $200M+ "skill games" market—video terminals that function identically to slots but exploit a legal distinction around player agency—is collapsing under court challenges that treat them as unlicensed gambling. The ecosystem thrived because bars, laundromats, and truck stops could install machines without gaming licenses or tax obligations, creating a regulatory arbitrage that the state's casino industry and actual gambling regulators now want closed. Lawmakers defending the machines are asking courts to preserve a decades-old carve-out that was never mathematically sound: machines designed to lose money at the same rate as slots, labeled "skill" because players press buttons rather than pull levers.