Great Aztec

What is Great Aztec?

During a livestream on Sunday, he said he had met with “eight victims of online betting”. To reinforce his criticism of the sector and in an attempt to win over conservative voters, he pointed out that one gambler had made 1,400 instant fund transfers (Pix) to a betting site. Lula criticised the Central Bank for failing to detect such a high volume of transactions to a single company.

However, that responsibility does not lie with the Central Bank. It is the role of the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets to monitor and regulate the sector. Betting companies submit detailed daily reports on bettors’ financial transactions with the sites. A specific module within Brazil’s betting management system detects recurring transfers.

“Today I met a young man who made 1,400 Pix transfers in three months, and the Central Bank didn’t detect that this was an excessive number of transfers to the same company?” Lula said.

What is Great Aztec?

Data from the Rede em Jogo project, by CondadoLab at PUC-Rio, revealed that 84% of the betting operators most recommended on Instagram are illegal in Brazil.

The research, published by The Intercept Brasil on Monday, analysed more than 55,000 Instagram accounts and cross-referenced the results with the official list of authorised operators from the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA).

According to the survey, the problem arises when a user follows a single account related to betting. The platform’s recommendation system then starts showing other profiles in the same segment, including betting sites, influencers and specialised pages.

How to play Great Aztec

“Part of the reason is economics. When games take months and significant money to develop, people naturally become risk-averse. Building on something that already works becomes the safer option.”

For Curwen, tackling the problem therefore means changing the risk-reward equation behind game creation. If creators can develop and test ideas more quickly and at significantly lower cost, an unsuccessful experiment becomes less consequential – and taking a chance on something genuinely different becomes easier to justify.

“Technology changes the equation,” he says. “If we can make development faster and significantly more cost-efficient, creators can afford to experiment again.