Pennsylvania’s skill game industry grew for more than a decade in a legal gray area where courts said the commonwealth’s gambling laws couldn’t touch them.
That changed earlier this year, when the state Supreme Court said the estimated 70,000 skill game machines in small businesses and private clubs across the state were, in fact, unlicensed slot machines and therefore illegal.
Now, those machines sit unplugged and dark, awaiting transfer to storage and an uncertain fate, after state lawmakers were unable to reach a compromise to tax and regulate the industry before the high court’s ruling took effect Oct. 14…