Wow, I've been testing out Lackey CCG:
This program is AWESOME. It really allows you to play most CCGs you want to pretty readily. It does nothing to govern the rules of play, but functions as a virtual tabletop.
If you have playtesters in different states and want them to be able to play together, this is definitely the tool for you.
I think it's also a great idea for publication if you aren't worried about people pirating your images. This latter point is a real concern for the time being, because the LackeyCCG folks and others on the net are scanning in thousands of cards from their favorite games for online play.
However, I've talked to the programmer about maybe having encrypted image files that need a code to open them or something, so that publishers can sell image collections that can't so readily be passed around on the net.
Right now this is a free beta. I haven't tried this for online play, only for solo testing thus far. But if it works well for online games (and it supposedly supports many people playing simultaneously in the same game for muliplayer CCGs like VTES/Jyhad), then this is a really fantastic engine.
Note, that you can play almost any card game, not just CCGs with this engine, and it is fantastically better than Thoth or almost any other engine I've looked at to date. It's really easy to configure, and is very robust.
One thing I'm not sure about for online play and for sales is if every player has to have access to all the same images for people to use them in their games. For example, if I have image sets #1 and #2 and you have only image set #1, will my image set #2 cards show up on your screen properly when playing a networked game? I don't know.
Probably the coolest feature of this thing is that it allows randomized booster packs and canned starter decks to be "opened" up by players to simulate, at some level, sealed deck tournaments. Very clever stuff.
Check it out. I think it's useful as a playtesting tool, a play environment, and maybe as a publishing platform.
Man, this thing sounds pretty sweet! I might have to use this when I playtest the CCG I'm currently working on.