Explained: Why No More Free PulpMX Fantasy for 2024

Steve Matthes, he of PulpMX Hockey fame, rooned Christmas for everyone when he dropped the news that PulpMX Fantasy would no longer be free to play in 2024 and in addition, some players, due to where they live, won’t be able to play at all.

Obviously, Slaw is joking about Steve rooning Christmas for everyone. This is a massively sticky situation and no one in their right mind would kill off a major portion of their customers.

So, why then, make the change?

Well, fantasy is a tricky beast. Once you offer a paid version, you can no longer legally offer a free version. Why? Slaw is not a lawyer, but Travis Marx of Pulp explained it pretty well in a Twitter thread:

In light of the @PulpMXFantasy news, I'd like to offer some explanations and answer some questions that hopefully clarify some things. First things first, nobody hates that we had to make these changes more than us. Losing players and bumming out the community does us no good.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

Gambling and fantasy are not the same aside from both being highly regulated. State by state laws between the two can be different, so just because you can gamble in a state or play fantasy does not mean the opposite will be true.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

If you can play another fantasy game in your state and not Pulp, it likely requires a license that we either a) didn't get done in time, or b) would be too expensive for us. Certain states like CT, NJ, DE, PA have licenses between 50k up to 250k annually.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

Free play cannot be mixed with paid play. As soon as someone pays to enter a contest, it's a paid contest and has to abide by paid contest rules (meaning you pay money with the opportunity to win something of monetary value in return).
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

I'd have to set up a game that was immediately obvious it was a separate, free game for that to work, and going back to the whole capacity thing (the amount of work just to have a game at all for 2024 was quite a lot for our small team), it just wasn't in the cards.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

You'll likely still see the experts play even though they aren't in permitted states. As site admins, the necessity to be able to use the site unrestricted is obvious and since they aren't paying money for a chance to win a prize, they are technically allowed to play.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

I'll do my best to answer any other questions to the best of my ability but please bear with me as we get flooded right now. Just know how bummed we are about the changes too, promise.
— Travis Marx (@imtravismarx) December 29, 2023

Please be nice to Steve and Marx on Twitter. This is obviously not something that they wanted to do.

In other news: I get to return to liking ALL the riders again.