Mikhailo Zborovsky: Digital Services Use Game Based Logic Outside Regulatory Standards

Based on industry reviews and digital behavior studies conducted in 2024–2025, experts report an increase in the use of gamified mechanisms across digital services – from marketplaces to mobile applications and social platforms. We are talking about tools for a set of bonuses without a guaranteed result, repeated tests, animation and endless page updates, which will enhance the effect of recovery and stimulate repeated actions of clients.

Mikhailo Zborovsky: Digital Services Use Game Based Logic Outside Regulatory Standards

Mikhailo Zborovsky, an expert in the strategic development of iGaming products, has great respect for the risks of this practice. In other words, gamification of data is often promoted not as an element of handiness, but as a way to accurately control the behavior of a client without delay, without a conscious choice, and without regulatory boundaries. This creates an unsafe similarity between the mechanics of digital services and the logic of gambling, while the rest are deprived of more regulation.

How Brands Turn Ordinary User Actions Into Emotional Triggers

In the digital environment, choice is increasingly less of a rational process. Instead of comparing characteristics and prices, the user increasingly responds to short emotional impulses, in particular expectations, anticipation or random rewards. These states are becoming a key tool for engagement today.

According to Mykhailo Zborovsky, the problem is not in gamification itself, but in the fact that it is increasingly used outside of any ethical or regulatory context. He draws this conclusion, based in particular on practical experience of participating in certain stages of forming product solutions for the Cosmobet platform, where issues of responsible design and transparency of mechanics were considered as part of a systemic approach. It is the psychological impact that is masked as convenience and entertainment, while the user receives no warnings, is not aware of the mechanics of the impact and is actually deprived of space for an informed choice.

Marketers and product designers are actively using the tools of behavioral psychology that were previously inherent in gambling. According to analytical reviews, it is the mechanics of variable rewards, traditionally used in gambling, that form a much more stable repeated behavior than a predictable outcome. The unpredictability of the reward enhances emotional anticipation and stimulates the user to return to the action even in the absence of rational benefit.

What triggers do brands use most often:

  • The effect of chance;
  • Artificial time constraints;
  • Micro-results instead of the final result;
  • Social comparison;
  • Unpredictable benefit.

According to Zborosky, the key issue is not the prohibition of gamified mechanics, but the transparency of their use. Gambling requires licenses, age restrictions and warnings about risks. At the same time, identical psychological tools in digital commerce remain beyond any supervision.

Why Reward Mechanics in Marketplaces Increasingly Resemble Gambling

The difference between a gambling game and a marketplace today is often not behavioral, but legal. There is a Spin button, here is Get a bonus. There is a win, here is a personal discount. From the point of view of user psychology, the difference between these scenarios is minimal, but in both cases the decision is made under the influence of uncertainty and expectation of reward.

Mykhailo Zborovsky draws attention to this similarity, speaking about the blurred line between UX design and gambling logic. According to him, this is not a direct comparison of platforms, but the use of identical behavioral scenarios that trigger the same neural reactions and form repeated interaction. Similar scenarios are also analyzed in iGaming, in particular on the example of platforms such as Cosmobet, where they are evaluated through the prism of responsible design and regulatory requirements.

Comparative analysis shows that the key mechanics of marketplaces and gambling games actually coincide:

  • Slot - Wheel of discounts;
  • Series of spins - Series of attempts;
  • Small win – Bonus without registration;
  • Pause before the result – Animation and delay;
  • Illusion of control – Personalization.

The fundamental difference between gambling and marketplaces today is not in the mechanics, but in the level of regulation. Gambling is required to warn about risks, limit access by age, and provide self-control tools. Marketplaces and social networks do not have such requirements, although they use the same psychological patterns. This, Zborovsky notes, creates a systemic imbalance when the user enters into interaction without realizing the rules of the game, since no one formally calls it a game.

Conclusion

This is the key answer to the thesis – we all play, even if we have not placed a bet. The game no longer needs casinos, chips, or real bets. It is sewn into the very architecture of digital services, in the pause before the result, in another attempt that the next click can change everything.

As Mykhailo Zborovsky emphasizes, the problem is not in the use of gamification itself, but in its invisibility to the user and the absence of rules. When the mechanics of excitement are disguised as convenience, marketing or entertainment, conscious conscious choice disappears. Experience with operators such as Cosmobet only emphasizes the importance of transparent mechanics and conscious user interaction. And that is why today the issue of responsibility is already a fundamental challenge for the entire digital economy, in which participation in the game has become the default standard.