Big Fish Casino game hits the top-grossing list on iOS

Big Fish Games is announcing today that its casino game, Big Fish Casino, has become the top-grossing app in the casino game genre on Apple’s iOS platform worldwide.

AppAnnie, a market researcher, said that Big Fish Games has taken the No. 1 spot. Big Fish itself said that its casino game’s revenue has tripled over the past year.

The Seattle-based company also launched a real-money gambling version of the app in the United Kingdom as part of a partnership with Betable. Betable does all of the regulatory compliance and security checks to verify whether players can legally play a gambling game in the place where they are located. In effect, Betable is able to reskin a social casino game, where players pay real money for virtual goods but cannot cash out, and turn it into a real-money gambling casino game.

Big Fish did not break out the financial performance of the gambling version, but it did say that the overall property has a loyal and engaged player base with more than 10 million friendships established in its social network. Many players have been active for more than three years.

Last month, Big Fish introduced Big Fish Bingo, which leverages the same casino mobile-social game platform. Next month, the company plans to add a real-money multiplayer roulette game to Big Fish Casino in the U.K. Carey DiJulio, the vice president and general manager of Big Fish Casino Products, said that the goal is to be the closest thing to the buzz and excitement of playing casino games in real world.

Big Fish Games was founded in 2002, and it has become the largest producer of casual games, with more than 600 external game developers and a catalog of 3,000 PC games and 250 mobile games. The company has distributed more than 2 billion games in its history.