Yes its a German owned company and the Germans gang up on you. I have been playing for years and have had horrible messages sent to me from German players. When I responded I was deactivated. The good news is that I will save a lot of money. The bad news is that they cheat and you never make any money. You mind as well throw your money out the window. Gameduell is making a ton of money off of everyone. #GAMEDUELL And they Hate AmericansI have been using gameduell for ten years always wining small amounts and had successful withdraws. The minute I won over a hundred dollars they deactivated my account. I tested this through my partners account and the same thing happened. Once I had winnings over $100 they deactivated the account for no reason. Too bad as the games are really fun.So, I deposited $50.00 to try the games at Game Duell and I used PayPal. The games are basic and are glitchy. All the games of skill I play like solitaire give you an undo for you to use. They had it sometimes and sometimes not when I was playing solitaire. These games remind me of the 1980's. OK now here is the Real issue. I had no issue depositing from my PayPal account but when I did the redemption request for the same 50.00 back to my PayPal account, I was sent paperwork to fill out to include a Driver's License or a Passport? Also, they will 1099 you? Only if it's over 600.00 Game Duell. Like you are actually going to win that much LOL. I smell SCAM! They got my 50 bucks they will never get another dime from me. Service Value Returns QualityGameDuell has now locked me out of my account after 15 years of playing. They claim my ISP should give me a new IP # that shows I'm in Oregon USA. New IP address made no difference...still locked out and now they say it is a proxy server that is being used to hide my location. Something changed when they tried to bar users located in states where on-line gaming is illegal. What's wrong? I have a $ balance in my account. Have never asked for funds. Even bought a new Router thinking the problem was an old one malfunctioning...ISP technicians have examined my connection and see no irregulatities. Interesting Got an email from them yesterday inviting me to play Winter Games on a new platform? Tried to log on for the umpteenth time and still no luck. Just the same notice of on-line gambling being outlawed in Oregon! Lots of these states are listed where on-line gaming is illegal but NOT Oregon.I started a multiple player game on this site. As I reviewed the status, I was pleased to see the final joiner... until that joiner disappeared. WTF... A new player joined and beat me. It made me question the fairness of this site. I had seen this before but questioned my memory. Now that it's happened again, I smell a rat.I joined GameDuell hoping to play games, once your credits have gone too low, you are out of luck until you become a paying player... the catch is that if you live in Canada you are out of luck, they do not recognize Canada and of course cannot pay, even though they are in the USA. I contacted them and they will expand at some time but no idea when. RoyalGames closed and advised everyone to go to GameDuell - DON'T! Here is my email from them Dear GameDuell customer, Thank you for your email. You are correct in that Canadian players are not able to upgrade to money players. We are still in the process of fully internationalizing our gaming platform. Because of this, we regret to inform you that paid registrations can only be carried out by residents of the countries listed on the registration form. A registration from Canada will only be possible if it were to be listed in the drop-down menu. We do apologize for any temporary inconvenience, and hope to be able to welcome you to GameDuell in the near future! If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Best regards, Barry Thompson GameDuell Customer Service --------------------------------------------- GameDuell INC, 1156 Clement Street, San Francisco CA ******* Email Service: http://www.gameduell.com/contact.htmlI have never had issues with payouts, but the site is essentially designed to allow you to run up a decent balance then lose it back. If you can master every game and stop while you are ahead, you can do well, if you play one game until you are great you have to keep beating people who are marginally better each time, meaning you have less of a chance of winning unless you are improving at a faster rate than your hundreds of opponents at large. I put in $20 once, lost it all then $20 again. I have now pulled out $250 and $300 after winning in almost every game. Sad thing is, now I'm to the point where I am playing at high levels at every game and not beating many people anymore. I may have maxed out my winning potential. They have been fair at refunding as well. No real issues at all other than the ones mentioned above.Have been a member of gameduell for a number of years and really enjoyed playing the games. I was a 'money player' but only in the sense of small amounts, playing for fun. I enjoy the games and was willing to do this - I never played to make money and withdraw. However lately the games keep dropping out and they refuse to refund, also as others above have stated, it is blindingly obvious that people cheat (which I don't like - I think if you can't play fair then what's the point of playing!) but also you very very rarely win against a higher ranked player - you just cannot beat them - that seems to be a built in 'cheat'. All in all, although I love the games, I have had enough of being taken for a ride and have cancelled my account. If you decide to join up - don't say you haven't been warned!One day after writing this review, I filed a complaint with the BBB, and two months later they got to my case. They contacted Gameduell about it, who contacted me, and said: "I apologize for the delay in contacting you, unfortunately we were only informed of your complaint with the BBB yesterday and could not locate any mail to ourselves regarding the matter. When withdrawals are requested, they go through several verification procedures. On this occasion, your withdrawal was subject to a verification of identity, for which reason we contacted you from the e-mail address *******@gameduell.com on 10/01/12 requesting that you complete the form that I have also attached to this e-mail and a copy of a government issued ID, e.g. drivers license. This is common procedure on our website and aims to ensure that the person registered on a player account truly exists and is also very likely the person using the player account. On 10/16/12, your player account was deactivated and you were contacted again as we had failed to receive these documents. If you did not receive either of these mails, it is possible that gmail automatically sent them to your Spam folder, though they will have since been deleted automatically by gmail. Your account is still in our database and the identity verification can still be completed at which point your withdrawal can also be processed. I apologize again for the confusion and delay. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us." After I submitted the form they sent me, my account was reactivated. I may have jumped the gun and allowed myself to believe the worst after reading the other reviews here. Below is my original review. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been a member of Gameduell for almost a year and a half and never had any trouble withdrawing money, until recently. My latest withdrawal amount was for $142. It's always taken 4 weeks maximum to receive the money I withdraw, and so seeing as the four week mark has just passed, I was feeling like I'd probably be getting the money soon. What happened instead was that today I tried to log in and they kept telling me the login info was wrong. When I tried to fill out the "forgotten your password?" form, they told me they had no record of my email address, so it would be impossible to send me my password. I know I didn't change or forget my password or email address though, the only explanation is that they're doing something wrong. Someone else here said after they tried to withdraw 300 euros their account was deleted, and now that I've had a similar experience it's seeming more and more like their strategy might just be to make excuses to cancel your membership when they don't want to pay up. Before today that seemed unlikely, because I had withdrawn $70 all at once recently, $35 at once just after that, and before those two withdrawals there were 5 instances spread out over the year where they paid small amounts between $11 and $19 that totaled $66. Apparently their generosity does have a ceiling, though! I can't even contact customer service to ask what's going on, because only account holders can email them, and they don't have the option of contact by phone. And I'm afraid to create a new account in order to contact them, because then they can use my multiple accounts as an excuse not to help me, claiming I'm violating their terms of use. I'm not sure they'd even answer anyway, though, because they had stopped responding to my emails in the few months before today, which I thought nothing of at the time but now am definitely suspicious about. I don't trust these people anymore. If there was some legitimate suspicion they had about my account activity, and they weren't just playing a crooked game, you would think they would have contacted me about the problem instead of just suddenly excommunicating me. What makes this even worse is that I considered myself to have reached a skill rating too high for it to be possible to be matched to any players who weren't too good ever to beat more than once in a great while, so my ability to earn large amounts through Gameduell was at its end. I wish they had at least paid me this last time and THEN deleted my account. I can't give them only 1 or 2 stars, though, because like I said, they've been great until just recently. It may be, though, that it was just coincidence that I wasn't exposed to their shady behavior until now, and they would have been screwing me over earlier if I hadn't been somehow flying under their radar. Who knows.Don't sign up! After numerous deposits and hours of games... (Registered 2 years ago). I finally made some money. Almost $200. Problems start when I want to make a withdrawal... You have to make live test videos, making scores impossible to do. With very short times obviously! In short they congratulated me, did not validate my videos because my scrores was not high enough according to them and finally they kept my money. And of course they closed my account. Haliding methods. Real bandits!I've been playing at Gameduell for 5 years. I have to disagree with some of the other reviewers - Gameduell DOES pay out. I have withdrawn money a few times and the payments have always been processed. The payments do take a while though, and more recently they've added extra verification checks which means you are likely to be contacted (by email) and asked to send copies of identity documents. If you don't respond to those emails your payment won't go through and I think your account can be disabled. So as long as you register with your real details, use an email account you actively check, and are prepared to verify your identity when asked, your payment WILL be processed. One time I was actually asked to take videos of myself playing the games because I had consistently high scores, to prove I was really playing and getting those scores. That was annoying, but I have seen hacked scores on there before, so I understand why they had to do it. There are lots of fun games on Gameduell, and they're quite varied, so you should find plenty that you enjoy or are good at. Also the bonuses are good. You can win a small bonus every single day from playing a free game - anyone who's ever deposited can do this. There are also promotional periods (e.g. Christmas special, Easter special) where you can earn more bonuses. The great thing about the Gameduell bonuses un my opinion is that they don't have the complicated terms & conditions attached that you often see on gaming websites (like having to play through the bonus amount 50 or 100 times). You can't withdraw the bonus directly but as soon as you've used it to enter a game, any winnings are completely yours. On the bad side... the game fees are in my opinion a bit high. Of the player's entry fees, about 30% is kept by Gameduell and the rest is the winnings (the exact amount changes depending on entry fee). As a poker player I think of this amount as "rake" - obviously this is how they make their money, but it's a pretty high percentage to rake from the winnings pot. It means that 2-player duels are pretty bad value. More players is better value but obviously harder to win! But you can make money from it - I've withdrawn more than I ever put in. My other main complaint is that the site is not 100% stable and I sometimes get "aborted" games. They're not that common but it's really frustrating because it usually registers as a zero score. If it happens before the game loads then you get automatically refunded. When there are clearly game errors, I've contacted customer services and they have always refunded my entry fee. Customer services can be a bit slow though, so you often have to wait several days to get that money back. It's not perfect but I've definitely found it to be fair and they're certainly not scammers. I've made a fair amount of money on this site and I half expected them to find an excuse to not pay me, but I've always done everything within the rules and they've always paid out.This is the best Casual Games Website. They are huge in Europe, specially in Germany.Don't play the game crazy 8 against jerries. The site prefers German players, 99 out of 100 games, the jerries had the winning hand. Guess it's a bloody na. I site that tries to steel money. It's not a rant because I'm pissed. It's my real world experience with this gaming site.I'm playing with free points for fun only. They take 50% commission for each game. If you're a moron and keen to risk your $2 for $1, you can play with real money.To play and deposit everyrhing goes well. But to withdraw the money, it is the obstacle course! He makes himself filming while playing, copies of proof of identity papers... again and again. Short to avoidI had been playing this site for several years. Lately, I've been called some pretty foul names, harassed via Gameduell email by players for a multitude of reasons. The final straw was that the players can cheat. For example, in Crazy 8's one player can play a bad card to show the player across that he has a +2, Skip, etc so that they can win. It seems extremely "fixed" lately as players with the same IP address are able to access the games simultaneously. After 7 years, I cancelled my membership since cheating is allowed per GD customer service person. In addition, I've had enough of being verbally abused by sore losers. SmhExactly the same experiences as you. I play a lot of Hearts games and I have NEVER seen so much BLATANT cheating! I could sit here and give you AT LEAST six players who I believe are well and truly PART of the cheating!After many years my player account has been stop. I do not know how to send id proof to be safe. I wanted to withdrew my many from my player account but did not receive any. This don't make my happy.I am not here to echo other complaints about payouts... I accept that I do not play to win money but to compete with real people and have fun. My problem is with the cheating manipulative nature of the site. I refer to the occasional time when I have made a complaint, usually about a destructive reduction in my skill level discordant with the games outcome. If you make a complaint of any kind you then find that you are dealt desperately bad hands for the next few days. This has happened to me on several occasions, enough to make me suspicious. Basically, they are taking my money and then cheating me and making a fool out of me. The most galling thing is that it is virtually impossible to prove, but only a total idiot could fail to spot the blindingly obvious. I am quitting their games but am seriously disappointed in their behaviour because the concept is good and I enjoyed it but I am not being taken for a fool any longer.In rummy, if any player goes out all in one go, the other players will have the total amount of their hand DOUBLED as a negative point value. And no, the game does NOT automatically remove any cards that are legit melds before penalizing you. Also, the game allows for a k-a-2 run, but there is no specific on how much the Ace is worth in runs like that. That's the reason most, if not every, digital rummy game allows EITHER Q-K-A, OR A-2-3, where the ace is either 11 or 1 depending on it's position, but never K-A-2, because scoring that is impossible. And you would not believe the number of times one player somehow gets dealt 3 or 4 wilds, while you get none and a bunch of copies of the same card. Now, on top of all of that, my browser is suddenly shutting down anytime I try to play Rummy, they're saying it's my fault, not their glitch, so I spent down what I had on my account, and I'll only play their free game calendar from now on. No more deposits for you gameduell, you lousy cheaters Tip for consumers:Just read all the rules of each game before playing. Products used:This is a skill game site Service Value Returns QualityI really love gameduell, all games are great and page designed awesome, BUT all the rest is bull big $#*!! I played like 200 times in few famous games and finally saw something suspicious, you don't need to be scientist to see how it's repetitive sometimes, one day all the time winning and just a day after lost all games? How it's possible! Than many times you see you get three, four times same card in row? Even in national lottery its pretty impossible to get number 1, 2, 3, 4 in a row at least few times, it's not just one situation! Than you check one player winning all time or pretty repetitive situations like you are winning and at the end in last game you loose all? I understand it's gambling and it can happen, but in such repetitive way, in a row wins and than in a row loose? THIS IS BIG GREATLY MADE CHEATTTTTT!STAY AWAY - SCAM you for your money, too many internet failures, no refunds and no gain... don't just stay away... RUN as fast as you can!Lol site stole 600 bucks from me and at the year asked me to send them my social security number to pay taxes on it this company is in the business of making money and part of that business is doing anything in their power to keep money in their accounts and out of yours.SCAMMERS. Stay away unless you want to throw your money away, and never withdraw, they will terminate your access without warning!I echo what someone else said on this site, there are huge problems if you try and withdraw money. I actually found a game that I could regularly play and win money on however I have never actually seen that money. They owe me nearly £300. They asked me to send copy of sensitive documents which I did and then they claimed I had created "multiple accounts" which was complete rubbish. They suspended my account and have never paid me my winnings. A complete scam.