Papaya Games court filing
According to Papaya — citing documents obtained through court proceedings in other litigation — the 4 Fair Play website was created by an organization retained by a person named Josh Levin, who controls a consulting organization called Square Strategies LLC, which was in turn paid over $75,000 by Skillz. A Skillz executive provided comments on the 4 Fair Play website design, according to screenshots of a website mockup included as a court exhibit.
Levin declined to comment on the filing.
Papaya’s allegations come in a counterclaim to a lawsuit originally brought by Skillz in March.
Papaya’s games allow users to play against other users and win cash. To quickly match players of similar skill levels, the games need large user bases.
According to Skillz’s suit, Papaya stole market share by often pitting real-life users against bots rather than real-life users. And by using bots, Skillz also alleges, Papaya tricked its players into participating in illegal gambling — where victory is based on chance — rather than a legal skill-based game. Skillz has made similar allegations against other competitors in other lawsuits.
In court filings, Payapaya says it uses bots only in tutorials and not actual gameplay. But it said in Monday’s counterclaim that Skillz games, however, do use bots.
The filing pointed to Skillz’s own developer documentation, which includes a “utilizing bots in gameplay” section.
“It is clear that Skillz’s repeated and highly publicized presentation of its platform as ‘never’ incorporating bots is false and deceptive,” the filing alleges.