Hi
The game played was under the progressive category which is clearly not allowed.
If we are to follow the player’s argument then it would mean that a player could play any game and that we would only have issues if he/she won a jackpot.
The fact that the player did not trigger the dollar ball feature does not change the fact that this game is in the progressive category.
To further avoid players playing on disallowed games we have inserted a category label on top of each progressive and branded game (as per attachment).
This in an extra step even though the progressive category is already defined in the casino lobby.
Furthermore we did not invent this category, it was provided to us by Playtech. We have it on the popup upon accepting the bonus and it is clearly categorized in the lobby.
We clearly leave no room for mistake, nor have we induced the player to make one.
No matter how you dress it up, it's still a bullshit term providing an unnecessary pitfall for the unwary.
This reminds me of another of my early cynical predictions. Years ago, players were advised that they could stay clear of trouble by following one very simple rule when taking a bonus. It was "play slots, and you will be fine".
This is no longer the case, and one casino after another has shunted arbitrary slots into the "not allowed" category. From the point of view of the player, there is no need for this, it is just there to trap the careless. Adding the dollar ball feature was just a way to ban even more slots that themselves are not progressive, but now are because this optional facility has been added. EVERY slot game actually "has a jackpot", whether or not it is progressive. Whilst winnings get confiscated, I bet you keep 100% of what players LOSE on the wrong games.
This predatory behaviour is particularly prevalent among Playtech casinos. Whilst others ban progressives with a bonus, they do NOT render almost half their entire library of slot games "progressive" by sticking on this dollar ball feature.
I was playing a Playtech casino the very week they pulled this stunt software wide, and only a minority of slots were progressive. Suddenly, the standard slots I had been playing for years with bonus suddenly had this new dollar ball feature. Not wanting to risk anything, I went to another, and another, and every damn one in my favourites had been "dollar balled". I went through every single video slot there, and only TWO didn't have dollar ball added. This meant that for the "slots bonus", only TWO slots were actually eligible, and they were both crap. The casino got uninstalled, and I have stayed away from Playtech ever since.
It may be better now, with more slots available there are more than two that are OK, but now it seems yet another banned category has been added, and a completely pointless one at that, the so called "premium" slots. There is no obvious reason to ban these other than to set another trap for the unwary, leaving players to micromanage their sessions like a legal exercise, when all they want to do is cast their cares to the wind and "hit the slots" with their bankroll. Playtech bonuses are not even cashable, so the bonus money itself never leaves the casino even when a player wins.
Microgaming, my favoured software, has a relatively small number of progressives among it's 400 or so games, most of which are slots. Of the allowed slots, there are all kinds of categories, even "premium" ones like Tomb Raider. Common sense has prevailed though, and as far as Microgaming is concerend, slots are slots, and the themes are nothing more than "eye candy", and make no difference at all to the outcome, or indeed the amount a player will often lose trying to meet WR.
You can spray bullshit with perfume, and put it in a smart suit, but it remains bullshit, even though it is much easier to spot and avoid.
No one Playtech can be singled out over this, the whole empire is riddled with this "trap the unwary" policy. Regular recreations player (the ones considered "innocent") are the main victims, whereas the advantage players (or "bonus abusers") will have gone through the terms carefully, looking for loopholes. What APs will be interested in is the "no WR" aspect of this bonus, which means a "hit and run" strategy can be used, and this does not need progressive slots, it will work just as well, if not better, on a regular allowed slot, but unlike a recreational player, they will run at the best time mathematically, and although the casino may try to confiscate the win, they will end up with a PR problem because no terms have been broken.
Things need to go back to being simpler, nothing fancy, just have slots bonuses that mean what they say, with ALL play on ANY slot OK.
I see that the multi vendor platforms are even worse when it comes to convoluted terms, with what country you are in governing which slots are OK, and which are in the banned list.
This is not going to encourage me to try Playtech again, in fact, those casinos I have played on other softwares have been dropped by me like the proverbial hot potato when they have informed me they are going to "improve" service by moving to Playtech.
I can't even bring myself to try an accredited Playtech casino, let alone any of the others.
I would like to hear a common sense argument as to why it is absolutely necessary to split the slots into allowed and banned categories, and I will not accept "because Playtech told us to", nor "because that is what the terms say". I see it as nothing more than setting unnecessary challenges for players, and basing the business model on xx% of players falling over one or more hurdles, not unlike those ridiculous cashback deals that were being offered in the UK where you bought a big ticket item, and were "guaranteed" your money back in full in 5 years. When investigated, and later banned by the government, it was revealed that the pitfalls were deliberately put in place to create situations where people would NOT get their money back. Some schemes were even underfunded, and RELIED on a set percentage of people not claiming, or falling into one of the traps. It went wrong when they underestimated the determination of the consumer in getting their money back, and they had to resort to rogue and illegal tactics in order to wrongly deny claims when too many customers were trying to get their money out of an underfunded scheme. Many schemes simply went bust, leaving the promises worthless, and this is what finally caused the government to act.
One such marketing scheme, which although not a cashback, relied on most customers not claiming. It was the notorious Hoover free flights fiasco. Hoover tried every dirty trick in the book, but so many customers claimed the flights that the scheme didn't have the money to actually provide them, and despite the dirty tricks, Hoover eventually went bust, killed by the losses from the promotion.
It illustrates that when a promotion looks too good to be viable to operate, there are bound to be a few sneaky tricks involved. The "too good to be true" in this case is a bonus with no WR. The "trick" is that this "slots bonus" excludes around 50% of the slot games, and players have to tread carefully.
Whilst progressives are in the progressives category, they can also be found lurking in other categories too, so one can click on a banned slot via it's listing in a different category, see "dollar ball", and that it is optional, and think that "dollar ball" is a completely separate game, and nothing to do with the basic slot, so should be OK if switched off during play. This was my experience of the listing of the "dollar ball" slots.
A better way would be to have two variants of the slot, one under progressives where the dollar ball can be played, and another where only the slot itself is offered, with dollar ball not even present.
A third way exists, run a casino that does not rely on bonuses to drive marketing, but something else, such as a weekly cashback, no strings, on losses on certain games. Players would still get a bonus on their play, but it would not affect the games they could play during their session. If they lose, the cashback would only be calculated on losses made on the featured games. If generous enough, the cashback could replace bonuses altogether, and an enhanced loyalty point redemption rate could be tried as another way to encourage more play.
Such a casino could not expect to become an overnight success, but it could grow a player base from all those who took bonuses elsewhere, and thought they were designed to trap them in a no-win situation.
