Casino Complaint BOVADA - Locking Jackpots, taking profit for themselves, cheating the players

[CL-Ed]

An interesting thing I noticed today is that our tracker is showing that it appears that Bovada and Slots.lv have now pooled each of their their Betsoft jackpots into one amount that is the same at both casinos. While the games may not be playable at the moment (?) something is going on behind the scenes with these games.

 

[RolfMoister]

An interesting thing I noticed today is that our tracker is showing that it appears that Bovada and Slots.lv have now pooled each of their their Betsoft jackpots into one amount that is the same at both casinos. While the games may not be playable at the moment (?) something is going on behind the scenes with these games.

Interesting.
It could also be of value checking

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from time to time, to see what happens there.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

CL-Ed, how did you see the jackpots were pooled, when the affected games don't appear at Bovada? I thought your scraper had to make a bet to get the header info which includes the jackpot amount?

 

[MichaelBluejay]

Casinomeister has issued a Warning about Betsoft, recommending players not play Betsoft games with progressive jackpots. (I think they accidentally left out the word "progressive", but I'm sure that's what they meant.)

 

[RolfMoister]

CL-Ed, how did you see the jackpots were pooled, when the affected games don't appear at Bovada? I thought your scraper had to make a bet to get the header info which includes the jackpot amount?

The jackpot is getting fetched by a normal POST-request.
No bet is needed to retrieve the values.
However, you need to load the game to get the correct cookies and POST-data to get that.
This could be obtained through the app or download casino, if the games are still available there.

 

[CL-Ed]

Yes our tracker has to log in to a user account at the casino and then grabs a session cookie from Betsoft. Once we have that we can directly request the jackpot amount from Betsoft's server.

I think this tells us that the games aren't truly gone, just that you can't access them through Bovada's website as they have been removed from display.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

Well, it's been over a week since Bovada pulled the Betsoft progressive jackpot slots. And still not a word out of them. I wonder whether there will ever be more news about the issue, or if this is the new normal.

 

[jshort]

Well, it's been over a week since Bovada pulled the Betsoft progressive jackpot slots. And still not a word out of them. I wonder whether there will ever be more news about the issue, or if this is the new normal.

This might be irrelevent since the Bovada rep was barely active anyway, but they recently lost their accredation here at CM (due to an unrelated issue)......However non-accred casinos are not required to have an active rep.

I too think they could save face with just one more response.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

Yes, that's the thing, I think they'd be easily forgiven for unknowingly having bad software, but their handling of the matter has been very slow and communication nearly non-existent. I don't think "just one more response" would be sufficient to save face, though, unless that response is a definitive answer and resolution, and I don't think it would be. Until there's a definitive answer and resolution, they should be communicating *much* more regularly, and completely. They've really dropped the ball here. They could pick it back up any time, but they're not doing so.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

NEWS FLASH: Bovada just sent its players an email message with a long list of games that will no longer be available. They're all Betsoft games, though Bovada didn't identify them as such. The message apologizes because Bovada knows that "a number of these games featured progressive jackpots that were very popular", but in fact the progressive games were not in the list. (e.g., Good Girl Bad Girl, The Glam Life) This appears to be a mistake, with Bovada listing the remaining games that were pulled after they initially pulled the progressive games on 6/24. I notified Bovada of the discrepancy. In its message, Bovada said they're looking for replacement games, and promised more details later in the week.

So, apparently Bovada couldn't work things out with Betsoft. That's a bummer, because Betsoft really had the very best slot games; they were visually stunning. That means everyone loses:

(1) Betsoft loses Bovada, which was probably its biggest client. And this is going to hurt their reputation. Accidentally having some bad games is one thing, but not communicating about it and not making a good-faith effort to fix them is quite another.

(2) Bovada loses because its players will be deprived of some of the funnest slots around. Players will play less, fewer new players will sign up.

(3) Bovada's players lose because they can't play the games they once enjoyed.

What was Betsoft thinking? We'll likely never know, because they've never deigned to comment on it.

 

[vinylweatherman]

NEWS FLASH: Bovada just sent its players an email message with a long list of games that will no longer be available. They're all Betsoft games, though Bovada didn't identify them as such. The message apologizes because Bovada knows that "a number of these games featured progressive jackpots that were very popular", but in fact the progressive games were not in the list. (e.g., Good Girl Bad Girl, The Glam Life) This appears to be a mistake, with Bovada listing the remaining games that were pulled after they initially pulled the progressive games on 6/24. I notified Bovada of the discrepancy. In its message, Bovada said they're looking for replacement games, and promised more details later in the week.

So, apparently Bovada couldn't work things out with Betsoft. That's a bummer, because Betsoft really had the very best slot games; they were visually stunning. That means everyone loses:

(1) Betsoft loses Bovada, which was probably its biggest client. And this is going to hurt their reputation. Accidentally having some bad games is one thing, but not communicating about it and not making a good-faith effort to fix them is quite another.

(2) Bovada loses because its players will be deprived of some of the funnest slots around. Players will play less, fewer new players will sign up.

(3) Bovada's players lose because they can't play the games they once enjoyed.

What was Betsoft thinking? We'll likely never know, because they've never deigned to comment on it.

Since the games were pulled rather than fixed, it opens the question of what has happened to all those player contributions that were fed into these "unwinnable" jackpots. Having pulled the games, these contributions have been removed from the possibility of being won by any player, so who has custody of this pool, Betsoft or Bovada?

 

[MichaelBluejay]

I was wondering the same thing. It's a question that Bovada and Betsoft should address. On 6/23, I told Bovada, "Once the problem is confirmed, you'll need to refund the progressive contributions made by the players to them and then reset the jackpot levels. I know that could be a tedious amount of data-mining, but I don't see another good solution. (If you make the jackpots suddenly winnable, then that robs all the people who contributed to the jackpot who had no chance of winning them.)"

 

[vinylweatherman]

I was wondering the same thing. It's a question that Bovada and Betsoft should address. On 6/23, I told Bovada, "Once the problem is confirmed, you'll need to refund the progressive contributions made by the players to them and then reset the jackpot levels. I know that could be a tedious amount of data-mining, but I don't see another good solution. (If you make the jackpots suddenly winnable, then that robs all the people who contributed to the jackpot who had no chance of winning them.)"

I recall a similar situation that lead to the same dilemma for a casino, and the same questioning from the player community about the contributions they had made. I believe they gave out the pool in the form of additional promotions rather than undertake the data mining necessary to calculate and refund the contributions made by each player. It was better than pocketing the lot, but still didn't please everyone, possibly because those who really invested into these slots would not get a fair return, whereas those who barely played them would be able to get back far more than they had put in.

They may decide to just sit tight and hope the issue goes away, which would probably be a serious error of judgement on their part, but is the option Betsoft seems to have chosen.

 

[jt2oux]

my favorite slots

Yep, that list contained my favorites..... Not sure how these will be replaced. Guess we can just stay tuned.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

NEWS FLASH: Bovada just emailed its players, announcing that they're increasing the progressive jackpots on the games they're keeping by $1.25 (which, according to my math, pretty much matches the amount of the progressive contributions to the Betsoft jackpots that were removed). Ramifications:

First, it's possible that Betsoft was the one who collected the progressive jackpot contributions, and didn't refund them to Bovada. IF that's the case, then Bovada is funding the jackpot rollover out of their own pocket, which is commendable. But I'm sure we'll never know whether this is true or not.

Second, although this technically makes players whole by making sure that the contributions get returned to the players in the form of jackpot wins, it doesn't seem like the best solution, because those players who fed the earlier jackpots seemingly had no chance of winning while they did so. So it seems like the best solution would have been to refund those contributions to the players. It's possible that data wasn't available to mine, though, but again, we'll likely never know whether that's true or not.

For that matter, Bovada has never confirmed that the Betsoft progressives were horked in the first place.

Bovada's email message is

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, at the bottom of the page.

 

[Fridayhigh]

Strange answer

Just a question. Following this thread the rep from Bovada stated " Our Random Number Generator (RNG), has been fully certified, and ensures all of our games are completely random". Which struck me of kind of odd. Correct me if I'am wrong, but Betsoft games are browser/flash based and would not be tied to Bovada as all data would be going through the central server of Betsoft. If you play a Betsoft game you can check the server just as those checked NET ENT games to make sure they were off the correct server, and as we learned some were not. Just my 2 cents

 

[MichaelBluejay]

Bovada's earlier answer about their "certified RNG" was likely a form letter. Imagine how many times a day they get accused of having rigged games just because someone loses. Early on they probably wrote a generic reply to cover those situations, back when they had only RTG games and not any Betsoft. But if Betsoft was the one controlling the Betsoft games (which I think is the case), then yeah, Bovada's answer didn't make sense. For that matter, there's still so much that Bovada hasn't explained, starting with confirmation that the Betsoft progressives were actually screwed up (and continuing with whether Betsoft provided the $ for the recent jackpot rollovers, whether someone really won that Betsoft progressive that looked like it hit on Casino Listings recently, whether it was possible to data-mine to find player contributions to the Betsoft progressives and if so why they didn't refund those contributions rather than rolling the contributions over into new jackpots).

 

[Fridayhigh]

It must have been a form letter as you stated, or it would not make sense. But there are a lot of sights that still offer their games, we are talking top accredited sites at that. I really cant handle the graphics, drives me crazy. But for the person that won the Jackpot, if he is based in Europe, then it should be no problem. As Betsoft is registered in Malta a European member state, you can even use your own solicitor to file from your home country. One advantage of Europe - not many mind you

 

[RolfMoister]

The changes has been made now to Bovada and Slots.lv as they stated in the email.

However, for some reason they synced the jackpots between them.
Before it was different values on the Jackpots, now however, they are the same.

 

[RolfMoister]

The changes has been made now to Bovada and Slots.lv as they stated in the email.

However, for some reason they synced the jackpots between them.
Before it was different values on the Jackpots, now however, they are the same.

And now they are seperated again.

 

[bowlingbob]

Pretty sure the slot Diggin' Deep is cheating at Bovada. 100s of spins through it and never once saw a single gold bar of which you need 3 to get into the bonus. I know it can be a rare bonus but my gosh to never see just one. You can see them in the reels as they are spinning like they are there but not even a god damn single one ever landed. Not going to keep dumping my real money into it when its cheating or broken.

 

[MichaelBluejay]

Probably, it's messages like the previous one that caused Bovada to not pay much attention when the real broken-Betsoft-slots issue was reported to them. You know, the boy-who-cried-wolf kind of thing.