You’ve probably heard of sites where you can play games for gift cards and cash. Are they legit? Which are the best? And how much can you really make?
What if I told you that you can get paid to play video games online?
You’d probably think it sounds sketchy.
Don’t worry, I had the same reaction. After all, it sounded too good to be true; I mean, who would pay you to play videogames, and why? How much can you really make, and is it safe?
To find out, I investigated around two dozen popular games-for-cash sites. As it turns out, most of them are pretty sketchy, having paid for fake user reviews to lure users into sites that never pay out.
However, four of them stood out to me as honest, legitimate, and maybe even worthy of your time.
Let’s investigate some legit games-for-cash apps.
How I came up with this list
To create this list I investigated about two dozen of the most popular games-for-cash sites and apps. I graded each using a rubric combining multiple factors:
Legitimacy – is the app what it claims to be, or is it stealing data?
Usability – does the app work and is it regularly updated and supported?
User reviews – is the quality and legitimacy of the app verified by real user reviews?
Cash payout – do users report actually receiving cash from the app?
Variety and quality of games – quite simply, are the games fun and varied?
To my surprise, even some of the most popular games-for-cash apps failed stupendously in two of the most critical metrics: user reviews and cash payout.
RollerCoin
Typical payout – ~$2-$300 per hour.
Cost to play – some BTC.
Payout method – BTC, ETH, Cryptos.
RollerCoin is an online Bitcoin mining simulation game, active for almost 5 years, the language used by the site is English. The central idea of the game is the distribution of Bitcoin in the form of rewards based on the power of extraction possessed by each player, just as in the case of true mining of Bitcoin.
Splinterlands
Typical payout – ~$2-$300 per hour.
Cost to play – some BTC.
Payout method – Cryptos.
Splinterlands (né SteemMonsters) is an epic, multiplayer fantasy card game within which thousands of gamers battle every day with monsters in a fight for control of a chaotic world at war. Full transparency of the blockchain's distributed ledger enables gamers to see how many of each different card exists in the entire game. Every card is individually owned, which means that even the creators of the game cannot take them away from any player, and all players are free to buy, sell, or trade them just like physical trading cards.
Stake.com: Bitcoin Game
Typical payout – ~$2-$300 per hour.
Cost to play – some BTC.
Payout method – BTC, ETH, Cryptos.
Trusted Crypto Casino & Sportsbook. Instant deposits and withdrawals. Live dealer, provably fair and over 1000 slot games. Bet with your favorite crypto.
idleminer
Where to play – Android.
Typical payout – ~$2-$3 per hour.
Cost to play – Free (most games).
Payout method – Hora token.
Crypto Idle Miner is a new idle clicker simulation video game, in which you will learn how to create your wealth and make loads of CASH by crypto mining and crypto trading! By playing this FREE and educational game you will get the basics of blockchain and hectic crypto world! Are you a crypto miner or crypto trader? Or overall Bitcoin Tycoon?! 💰
Hire and level up managers to automatize your process, earn idle cash, upgrade your rigs, and mine/sell over 50 coins and altcoins in this simulation video game! Click and tap, and then tap some more and begin your Bitcoin adventure!
CryptoPop
Where to play – Android.
Typical payout – ~$2-$3 per hour.
Cost to play – Free (most games).
Payout method – ETH.
CryptoPop is another Candy Crush style game, similar to Bitcoin Blast. But instead of earning Bitcoin, you're earning Ethereum. As you play, you earn points.
coin-birds
Typical payout – ~$2-$3 per hour.
Cost to play – Free (most games).
Payout method – BTC, Gift cards via email, cash via PayPal.
A very simple game, based on farmville, but much simpler. Start with a pious hen, connect to the site every day, collect the eggs, sell them and receive a bonus that will allow you to buy new chickens. There are various qualities of hens / birds, each making a different number of eggs per hour, and each has its cost. If you want you can turn silver eggs for the withdrawal of money. Simple and undemanding, with numerous payment methods.
Many games-for-cash apps have glowing App Store reviews that are clearly fake and paid for. This really bothers me, because it means that rather than listen to their critical user feedback, developers chose instead to spend resources drowning them out so they could lure more users into broken apps. Fake review scores mean a developer doesn’t care and neither should you.
Next, some of the more popular games-for-cash apps have developed an insidious scheme whereby they cut off earnings just short of their payout threshold. For example, one app has a $10 minimum payout amount which sounds low, but right as users approached $9.85 in credit, earning opportunities mysteriously dried up.
As a result, users stuck in a sunk-cost fallacy would continue to log in for weeks and months, digging through ads for opportunities that didn’t exist. Basically, the app had duped them into hours of free labor, and naturally, had no place on this list.
Game apps to avoid and why
Now that I’ve shared four apps that I think are worth your time, here are three that aren’t. Out of the dozens of apps I investigated, I’m shining a spotlight on this ignominious trifecta because their shadiness was the most well-hidden. These three sites and apps appear legit at first, but there’s something more mischievous, even sinister underneath their facades.
Bananatic
No single violation disqualified Bananatic from this list. Rather, it was more of a “death by 1,000 cuts” situation, since everywhere I looked I got an uneasy vibe from this site.
Everything about Bananatic looks legit at first glance. According to Similar Web, the site has over a quarter-million visitors per month plus a similar number of Likes on Facebook, and the BananApp (as it’s called) received plenty of five-star reviews on the Play Store. Plus, the site itself looks pretty legit and well-designed, almost like a rival to Steam.
However, the plot thickens as I pulled back the curtain. Despite having 256,000 Facebook Likes, nobody engages with their content, posted at precisely 9 AM every four days. Many of their five-star reviews on the Play Store sound fake, and when a real human publishes a legit one-star review, Bananatic responds “Please change or delete your opinion.”
If their overall shadiness wasn’t enough, Banatic pays out slower than average, and who knows what they do with your personal information. So for those reasons, I recommend you seek sanctuary in Mistplay instead.
Givling
Givling was the last games-for-cash site to be ejected from my final list. It wasn’t easy, because I cheered for Givling. I wanted the app to be as good as it sounded.
But like a well-written Game of Thrones character, Givling lured me in with initial likeability, only to betray me with its darker nature.
In my defense, it’s hard not to admire Givling after hearing its elevator pitch. It’s a trivia app where the semi-weekly winners split a $50,000 jackpot to help pay off their mortgage or student loans. Players really do receive the money, which mostly comes from sponsors.
Mostly.
See, the problem with Givling is that you can’t just log in tomorrow, win the week’s trivia, and receive the jackpot. Everything you do in Givling raises your place in the “queue”, and whoever’s at the top of the queue every two weeks gets the jackpot.
You can rise up the queue by watching ads and playing games, but also by buying products from Givling’s sponsors and simply handing the app money.
Do you see the problem? You essentially have to “bid” your way to the top, which explains why one woman had to spend $42,000 to win $50,000 (and countless players spend thousands for nothing).
Inevitably, in 2019 Givling got blasted by CNBC for manipulating and frisking players who were simply desperate to pay off their student loans. A Minnesota state legislator called it “gambling” while watchdog group Pyramid Scheme Alert called it “a sophisticated scheme.”
Givling would claim that they’ve since introduced a Free Queue, and much of the pay-to-play revenue goes to crowdfund someone else’s student loans, but I think these are shaky defenses; even the free queue is going to suck up too much of peoples’ time for nothing, and you shouldn’t be financing someone’s student loans by driving others deeper into debt.
Lucky Day
Lucky Day was endorsed by so many “Top 10 Games-For-Cash Sites” listicles that I assumed it must have some air of legitimacy. Furthermore, it offered a simple, seemingly incorruptible premise: play free virtual scratch-offs, maybe win some cash.
Even still, the app had a rather nasty trick up its sleeve, one that I alluded to earlier.
Lucky Day has a payout threshold of $10. When you collect enough points, you’re supposed to head to the in-app marketplace to exchange your points for a gift card. However, users are reporting that once they reach about $9.90 worth of points, they never seem to win the last $0.10 despite weeks, months, even years of attempts.
Once you approach the threshold, the app pushes paid “upgrades” that supposedly increase your chances of earning those final $0.10 so you can finally cash out. Stuck in a sunk-cost fallacy, users spend $1, $3, then $5 on upgrades but still don’t win the final $0.10.
Meanwhile, Lucky Day continues to profit from user frustration through upgrade purchases and ad views. To add insult to injury, even the scant few users who do cross the $10 threshold report that once they do, all of the gift cards in the marketplace instantly become “out of stock” and unavailable for purchase.
Lucky Day also has a comically shady Play Store presence. Predictably, pretty much all of its reviews are scathing, with users complaining about the impassable $10 threshold and “sold out” gift cards. And yet, most of the reviews are scored five stars so the app averages 4.1. The only reason I can think of why users would score an app they dislike with five stars is because said app incentivized them to (fraudulently).
I hope that my descriptions of Bananatic, Givling, and Lucky Day serve as reminders that most games-for-cash sites are a waste of time at best and can fleece you out of thousands at worst. If you’re really interested in experimenting with this type of website, you’ll find safer havens in the four that I’ve highlighted.