Do online casino customers also enjoy role-player card games?
A new gaming platform is banking on it.
As dual-currency gameplay bans take effect across multiple states in 2025, most notably California (starting Jan. 1) and New York (right now), an innovative approach has emerged: Card Crush, registered in the Isle of Man-based to Vision NL Limited, has launched an RPG card game model that may fall outside the scope of new legislation.
And here’s the kicker: Card Crush is only available in California and New York. It is not operational anywhere else in the United States.
Sounds intriguing, right?
Let’s get into it.
How Card Crush works
When you first access cardcrush.com, it looks like an RPG card game site, as the promo image markets a Mystery Box next to a graphic of gold- and silver-plated treasure chests with different RPG cards behind them (like one that looks like a wizard labeled World Druid — and it has a speed of 6 and a Legendary classification).
But then you look to the left of those chests and cards, and you see stacks of green coins.
And that’s when you realize there may be more at play here.
Scroll down, and you’ll see information for casino-style games players can play at this RPG gaming site, as well.
So what’s going on here?
Vision NL Limited has created a new peer-to-peer RPG card game that mimics World of Warcraft or, in more simple models, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh. Matches involve five rounds with two players pitting their best five-card selections against each other.
A player’s goal is to assemble the best deck of cards possible to win as many head-to-head battles as possible in order to climb the leaderboard.
By increasing their rank and ascending the tiers of the leaderboard, a player accumulates Loyalty Club Points. The more points you have, the better your cards become — and the more Mystery Coins you receive. A player can also purchase a Mystery Box, which comes with cards to add to their deck and a number of Mystery Coins.
These Mystery Coins can then be used to play the casino-style games at Card Crush, which says it’s only for players 21 and older and promotes that it offers games from Evoplay and Ruby Play. And these Mystery Coins can also be withdrawn for cash, just like the withdrawable currency on traditional dual-currency platforms.
An RPG card game does not ‘simulate gambling’
The operator does not use the “dual-currency” language included in the bans in California and New York. There is only a single currency in the game: Mystery Coins. The only other object of value in Card Crush are the cards, and these are not a form of currency in the game and cannot be used for the casino-style games.
There are inherent similarities, but there are also key differences that may technically allow Card Crush to operate in California and New York.
For instance: The operator has also created a rewards system — its Loyalty Club — that awards players with Mystery Coins simply for their normal gameplay and rising the ranks of the leaderboard. This is somewhat similar to the Modo Stars rewards system that Modo.us plans to unveil Jan. 1, where players will receive rewards for their Gold Coin gameplay in the same way players at PLAYSTUDIOS games get rewarded with things like cruises, hotel stays, or concert tickets.
Another one of those key differences? (And this one is crucial … )
The engine of Card Crush is an RPG card game, a type of game that is not covered in any aspect of the language in California Assembly Bill 831 or New York Senate Bill 5935.
AB831 bans games that “simulate gambling, which, for purposes of this section, includes, but is not limited to, slot machines; video poker; table games, including, but not limited to, blackjack, roulette, craps, and poker; lottery games as defined in Section 319 of the Penal Code; bingo; sports wagering, or any game that mimics or simulates similar gambling.”
No mention of Pokemon-style card games.
And SB5935 bans any game that “simulates casino-style gaming, including but not limited to, slot machines, video poker, table games, lottery games, bingo, or sports wagering.”
Again, Card Crush — with its Fern Dragon, Ice Cub and Pyre Druid cards among those leading the gameplay action — may not qualify here.
How other operators are changing their offerings
Other operators are responding in their own ways to gaming market restrictions, with five states outlawing dual-currency play and others firing off cease-and-desist letters.
Some are layering on new ideas. Modo.us is expanding its ecosystem to include a rewards program, while MyPrize.us went further, becoming the first gaming platform to publicly pivot into prediction markets through a partnership with Crypto.com. (Although MyPrize Markets haven’t launched yet.)
At the scale end of the spectrum, VGW is expanding and consolidating at the same time. For consolidation, the company is unifying its technology stack to power all of its brands. For expansion, VGW now has five brands in its library — Chumba Casino, Global Poker, LuckyLand Slots, the newly launched LuckyLand Casino, and United Slots, slated for early 2026.
Elsewhere, operators are experimenting with alternative formats. Industry chatter points to possible moves into historical horse racing, live race results, and bingo.
Back in September, ClubWPT Gold did something similar to the Mystery Coins/Cards dynamic in Card Crush: It ditched the Gold Coin/Sweeps Coin structure and replaced it with a single currency called Chips that can be redeemed. And then the site now sells poker training tools and bundles Chips alongside them — recasting itself as an educational platform rather than a gaming platform.
There’s also a model worth watching overseas. In the United Kingdom, Sweepmate is running paid prediction contests with shared prize pools covering everything from sports to reality TV and elections — essentially DFS meets prediction markets.
What are the implications?
If Card Crush pans out in California and New York, it opens up a Pandora’s box of possibilities for operators.
Want an engine for players to acquire a single currency similar to withdrawable coins?
Find a game you think players would also be interested in — like an RPG card game, or perhaps trivia, Tetris-style games, etc. — and use that as the base engine for your new gameplay model, with the casino-style games as a critical back-burner item.
It’s all theoretical at this point, though, as we’ll see how things pan out in California and New York for Card Crush. It’s notable that the operator did not launch the site in other newly restricted states in 2025 — New Jersey, Connecticut, and Montana — as they may be testing the waters with a new style of game and focusing on the highest-reward markets.
