Product Revamp
Product flow changes after the implementation of the industry shattering 28% tax by the Govt.
Background
​What is real money gaming?
​Real money gaming is a form of online gaming where users can put money at stake in the hopes of winning more. This includes various types of games such as rummy, poker, fantasy games, and other skill-based games.
What is Gameskraft?​
Gameskraft is India's biggest rummy platform where 2 or 6 players put some money into the game of rummy and 1 player wins the entire pot minus our platform fee(15% of the total pot).
E.g. If two players are playing with ₹100 then one of them will lose and the other player will win ₹170 and Gameskraft will earn ₹30 in platform fee.
What happened on 1st Oct 2023? (Problem)​
Earlier, Govt. used to tax the profit made by the RMG companies. E.g. If Gameskraft is making ₹30 then it will pay 28% tax on its profit.
Now, Govt. has decided to tax the players as well. E.g. If a player is putting ₹100 then he/she will only get ₹78 to play with(28% tax). So now if two players are playing then the winner will only win ₹132(₹78*2 - 15% commission). After this law, the value proposition is not good and hence it will be a huge deterrence for the player to come and risk their money.
My role and the team
This was a very big change and a time-sensitive project that was required to be designed within 2 weeks. The entire office was focused on building these flows.
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Graphic designer and motion designer: Worked on the new identities and the explanation videos that were spread across the app.
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Product Managers: Multiple product managers were involved in overseeing different flows
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My Role
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ideation of some of the key flows for all the rummy brands.​
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Designing and aligning all the key stakeholders and leadership teams to these designs.
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Design handover and UATs of the flows for Playship (one of the rummy brands).
Product Solution
To keep the value prop intact, we will have to give back the amount paid by users in taxes in the form of rewards.​
Current user behavior on the platform​
User adds money in platform in the morning
Users plays the game and wins the money
User takes the money out in the evening.
It repeats
Making sense of the numbers
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If we allow the current behavior to persist, we will take a huge loss on our profits since we will be earning 15% in commission per game but we will be giving 22% back in rewards.
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So we have to figure out a way to stop users from taking their money out of the system and keep using that money to play games and keep giving us the 15% commission.
Design Solution
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Communicating to users that they will be getting the entire amount that they will be paying in tax since there was a lot of news around 28% tax.
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Encourage users to put their money back into the deposit balance(non-withdrawable) from the withdrawal balance(withdrawable).​
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From scorecard: As soon as the user wins the game, we should encourage users to put their money back in the deposit balance.
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From withdrawal: When users come to withdraw money to their bank account, we should encourage them to not withdraw the money, instead, they should put the money back into the deposit balance.
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Understanding different wallets
Old Wallet
The wallet is divided into 2 parts:
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Deposit: All the money that user transfers from their bank account to the platform goes into this. Once users add money they can't take it out.
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Winnings: When users play the game using the deposit balance and win the amount, the entire winning pot then transfers to the winning balance which can be withdrawn to the bank account.
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This is how casinos also work. The total money that a user has is the deposit balance + winnings balance.
New Wallet
I had to redesign the wallet with new changes. I also used this opportunity to make some design hygiene changes as well.
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Now for users, the wallet will be divided into three parts. The idea is to divide the wallet into a withdrawable balance, a non-withdrawable balance, and a reward balance.
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Withdrawal Balance(WIthdrawable): It is the same as winning balance where the money comes after the user wins a game.
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Player Game Balance(Non-withdrawable) - It is further divided into 2 balances:
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Deposit balance: ​This is where all the money that users deposit from their bank account comes. According to law, any money that comes to this balance will be liable for 28% tax.
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Game Balance: This is where we send the money when the user decides to transfer their winnings back to a non-withdrawable wallet (Explained later).
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Discount Credits: This is a new reward construct. All the rewards that we will give will be in the form of this.
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When a user plays a game, the money will be first deducted from the Discount Credits, then from the deposit balance, then from Game Balance and then finally from the withdrawable balance.
Add Cash changes
When a user adds cash from a bank account to the platform, we used to give some extra rewards. So for an Add Cash of ₹1,000, they will get a total of ₹1,100.
Old Add Cash Screens
New Add Cash flow
Now with the new flow, old reward constructs are removed and a new reward construct called discount credits is introduced.
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Requirement:
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The idea is to communicate to the users how much playable amount will they get after adding a certain amount of cash. E.g. If a user is adding ₹1,000 then they will be getting ₹1,000. We, need to show that because there was already a lot of buzz around the new tax laws and players are afraid that from now on they will not be getting the full amount.
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If a user wants to understand how the calculation is happening then they should be able to see that as well.
Numbers and Problems
When we went live with the above flow, the Add Cash amount dropped by around 12% after the change. After talking to some of our players we identified the following factors:
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Fall in the desire to play after a bad sentiment around new tax laws.​
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There are no rewards on the platform anymore.
Design update
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With this version, we wanted to show the calculation to the user on the first screen as well so that they can understand what is happening when you add different amounts without having to write the number and then see the calculation.
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We wanted to highlight that the amount that they are getting back is a reward.
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Impact
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The number of users who are going to the next screen after clicking continue increased by 22%
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The net add cash amount increased by 6%.
Encouraging rotation
Once the user has added cash, and then won a game. Their winning amount is transferred to the withdrawable balance which users generally take out. We want users to not take that money out instead we want them to use that money again to play the games. To encourage users to do so, we want them to transfer those winnings to a non-withdrawable balance by giving them extra rewards.
Scorecard
Iteration 1
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The idea here is to show users how much money they won. And what they need to do to earn extra rewards.
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Here we are trying to show the movement between the two wallets graphically.
New Add Cash flow
Iteration 2
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Here, I have tried to show the difference between the two choices the user has.
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I am trying to show where the money will go in each of the case.
Why ask user to do this on the scorecard.
Here the user has just won the game and the intention of the user is to play more games instead of taking the money out. So, users are more likely to rotate and earn extra money from here.
Result
We did an A/B between the two designs. There were 2 things that we are trying to measure here:
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How much money is being rotated back to the non-withdrawable balance
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How many people are calling our customer care about this
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In iteration 1, people are rotating more but we are getting a lot more complaints from the people regarding what happened to their money. Why can't they withdraw it? So, people are clicking without even understanding what is happening.
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In iteration 2, even though the rotation is less, there are lot less number of confused cunstomers.
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In the end, we ended up going with the iteration 2.
Adoption
The overall adoption of the feature here is about 12% and the rotation among HVPs (high-value players) is more than 20%.
Withdrawls
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When a user comes here to withdraw money, we are giving them 3 options. One is regular which will let users withdraw the amount of money they request, but will be charged a withdrawal fee(not to all users) to discourage users from withdrawing.
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In the other 2 options, the user can choose to take some money out and rotate the rest of the requested money in return for rewards.
Adoption
Since the intent of the user is to withdraw money, the rotation was expected to be low. But, it showed promising results. The overall adoption of the two options was around 10%.
Conclusion
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All the flows went live altogether on 1st October 2023. The above flows and design changes were done in the span of 10 days.
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Overall, with all the changes, the net commission(commission - rewards) dropped from 55% to 40%.