Patent ID: 11935364
Assignee: IGT
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A method for sharing player awards in a gaming system, comprising:
receiving, by a processor of a gaming system and from a first player member, a group formation request to form a multi-player group to play a gaming session comprising multiple games to be played by the multi-player group on multiple electronic gaming machines, the group formation request comprising a number of potential player members to be invited to be in the multi-player group and a predetermined sequence of characters to be input by each invited potential player member and one of a predetermined rule set defining an allocation of a winning outcome among player members of the multi-player group and a duration of the multi-player group;
sending, via a network interface to the number of potential player members, a join request comprising an invitation to join the multi-player group;
receiving, by the processor of the gaming system and from a selected potential player member of the number of potential player members, a join request response to join the multi-player group, the join request response comprising a sequence of characters;
validating, by the processor of the gaming system, the join request response of the selected potential player member by confirming: that the sequence of characters in the join request response matches the predetermined sequence of characters and one of that a location of a user device corresponding to the selected potential player member is within a specified location, that the join request response was received within a selected period of time, that the join request response was sent by a selected communication modality, and that the join request response was received substantially synchronously with a group chat comprising the selected potential player member;
when the join request response of the selected potential player member is validated successfully, designating, by the processor of the gaming system, the selected potential player member as a player member of the multi-player group; and
terminating, by the processor of the gaming system, the multi-player group upon occurrence of a predetermined event.