Online gambling firm 888 Holdings has done a deal with Real Dice Inc to buy social gaming studio Mytopia for $18 Million.

Mytopia develops top Facebook games such as ‘Bingo Island 2’ and ‘Pacific Poker’ and also games for mobile platforms including iPhone, Blackberry and Android.

This new deal will form the beginning of 888 Holdings’ social gaming and mobile strategy according to their CEO, Gigi Levy. He said the deal would "build on our aim of providing a variety of entertainment destinations. Improvements in mobile technology now mean more people are comfortable using applications on the move, and we expect significant growth in this area."

In addition, "the acquisition extends 888's reach and market share in the fast growing social networks and smart mobile devices, such as iPhone and Android-powered handsets," Levy said.

The deal consists of $12 million cash and an additional $6 million to be paid if certain targets were reached before the end of 2011. The maximum cost to 888 Holdings is thought to be around $48 million.

As part of the deal 888 Holdings will get the games development studio which specialises in cross platform social games for smartphones, mobile handsets and social networks, a library of games, real time multi player mobile Poker on various platforms, a technology platform for hosting real time social game son social networks and mobile plus a software licence for Paticle Code, a cross platform application development framework for mobile devices and tablets.

Casual games are proving to be big business these days are thought to be responsible for the increase in traffic on sites such as Facebook. Over the last 12 months, social network traffic to the social network increased to 185% compared to the same time period in the previous year. Facebook has left Google behind in terms of overall traffic for the week ending March 13th as recorded by Hitwise.

Google announced in April that they would be acquiring an Israeli startup called Labpixies who develop casual games for the web and mobile devices. The details of the deal were not revealed but an Israeli news source suggested that Google paid $25 million for the company.