A screenshot of Hangame homepage. Hangame Poker offers special discount rates of dealer fee to charged members depending on the their fixed monthly payment rate.

Illegal gambling place, so-called 'House' makes a profit from running the game. They charge money as an entrance fee from customers who come to gamble. In general, the house doesn't charge money at the beginning of the game. Instead, they charge certain amount of money depending on the size of betting while customers play games.

According to the existing law, 'opening a gambling site' charge must have the purpose of profit. If there's no purpose of profit even it provides a gambling site, it comes under 'aiding and abetting gambling'. Opening a house and extorting money is a typical scene of 'opening a gambling site' for profit.

Surprisingly, extorting money can be witnessed in Hangame.

Hangame Poker charges a part of poker money under the name of so called 'dealer fee' from players in each game.

Most players doesn't care much about it because Hangame charges only a fraction of poker money earned from the winner of game. However, considering that they receive commission from hundreds of games in poker rooms which take place at the same time, the sum is greater than you can imagine.

Hangame has been claiming that Hangame Poker is not gambling and it allows betting through cyber money just to make it more fun while playing games.

Then why are they asking for commission for every game?

While Hangame is well aware of the fact, Hangame Poker money can be easily cashed out from money dealers at anytime. It means that Hangame's dealer fee can be turned into real money as well.

The disposal of Hangame's cyber poker money collected from games is yet unknown. Hangame gives little information about it by saying that the cyber money is used in Jackpot or events within poker games.

What's more interesting is Hangame Poker conducts another profitable business by offering special discount rates of dealer fees to members depending on their membership.

General players are asked for 3-percent commission on winning a poker game. But for A-Plus members who pay 4,000 won (approximately $4) per month pays 2.5 percent commission, V-Plus members who pay 10,000 won (approx. $10) per month for 2.0 percent commission, and W-Plus members paying 30,000 won (approx. $30) per month are only asked for 1.5 percent commission.

An official form Hangame said, "Dealer fee is asked to users to control the money supply in the game, in other words for the balance of consumption related to supplying currency that allows users to enjoy free games. If poker money keeps issuing without spending, poker money will lose its value as in the real economy where currency value decreases when inflation takes place, and eventually users might need to pay more money to purchase poker money."

The official added, "Hangame doesn't exchange its game goods for real money nor sell goods directly so its goods are only used for cyber money and it has nothing to do with Hangame's profit or sales."