A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered Papaya Gaming to hand over 719 million dollars to rival mobile gaming company Skillz, closing out one of the largest false advertising judgments in American legal history and confirming that a jury was right to conclude Papaya built its business on rigged competition.
Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued the ruling this week, rejecting every post trial motion Papaya filed in an attempt to overturn or shrink the verdict. The judgment increases Skillz’s total recovery by close to 300 million dollars over the jury’s original award handed down in April, when the panel found Papaya liable for 420 million dollars in actual damages. Because a plaintiff can only recover once for the same injury, the court replaced that damages figure with the larger disgorgement amount, which strips away the unjust profits Papaya earned through its conduct. On top of the 719 million dollar figure, the court also tacked on roughly 10 million dollars in attorney’s fees and additional litigation costs tied to Papaya executives invoking their Fifth Amendment rights during discovery.
Bots Built Into the Business Model
The case, filed in 2024, centered on claims that Papaya violated the federal Lanham Act and New York’s General Business Law by advertising fair, real money competition between human players while quietly stacking its games with computer generated opponents. Papaya is best known for popular mobile titles such as Solitaire Cash, which let users compete for cash prizes in head to head and tournament formats.
Evidence presented at trial showed that between 2021 and 2024, Papaya ran more than 13 million bots on its platform, a number that actually outpaced its roughly 11 million real human users. Of the 6.7 billion dollars in prize money the company advertised to players, close to 70 percent of it, an amount near 4.7 billion dollars, never reached a real person because Papaya’s own bots were the ones declared winners.
Court records described how the bots operated on more than one level. Basic filler bots kept game lobbies full so players wouldn’t sit around waiting for a match. A separate category, described in filings as pity bots, were programmed to deliberately lose to players stuck on long losing streaks, feeding them just enough fake wins to keep them engaged and spending. In some of the twenty player tournaments examined during the case, nineteen of the twenty entrants were reportedly bots, leaving a single real person competing against an entire room of code.
Skillz Says the Ruling Vindicates the Industry It Built
Skillz, which now operates under the corporate name Firy Inc. following a rebrand earlier this year, framed the ruling as validation of the fair play model it says it pioneered in mobile skill gaming. Company founder and CEO Andrew Paradise argued that Papaya never found a way to legitimately compete with Skillz, and instead leaned on fake competition to imitate what Skillz had already built. He called the judgment proof that, in his words, “the moat was real.”
This isn’t the first time Skillz has taken a bot related dispute to court and won. Back in 2021, the company sued AviaGames, maker of the Pocket7Games app, over similar allegations. That case revealed internal messages referencing bots with names like Cucumbers and Guides, along with a specialized bot nicknamed the shark, which was designed to specifically target and beat human players who were winning too much money. A California federal jury sided with Skillz in February 2024, awarding the company 42.9 million dollars, and AviaGames settled the broader dispute two months later for 80 million dollars total.
Papaya Pushes Back and Plans an Appeal
Papaya has not accepted the ruling quietly. The Israeli gaming company said it was deeply disappointed with the decision and confirmed plans to appeal to the federal appeals court, arguing the legal process is far from finished. A company spokesperson maintained that Papaya remains focused on running its mobile gaming business with integrity and fair competition for its players.
The ruling also lands during a rocky stretch for Papaya more broadly. Just days before the judgment came down, the company laid off 30 employees out of an approximate staff of 400, a move it said was unrelated to the ongoing litigation.
Skillz has said it intends to pursue full collection of the judgment, though the company acknowledged that any actual recovery could depend heavily on the outcome of Papaya’s appeal and any further proceedings that follow. A separate court opinion addressing Skillz’s request for injunctive relief against Papaya is still expected.
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