iGaming - Black Sheep – But, why?

[ultra100]

Just seen this message from CasinoMeister, "There is a crap company you need to be aware of:".....

And to be honest, I have been thinking this lately, why iGaming Industry from all angles (players, casinos, affiliates) have been a black sheep industry? Experienced CM members thoughts?

I published my first site in 1998. Have been in all sorts of niches, from music to internet security, classic e-commerce & adult – You name it. In adult, I have never ever missed a check, or have been shaved by a company.

Contrary, in iGaming I have seen it all. From all perspectives. Shaving reputable affiliates, rogue online casinos, bonus abuse players, scummy affiliates, – all sorts of scams.

Why is that? Nature of the industry, or........?

 

[maxd]

“Because they can” comes to mind. Repercussions are pretty minimal — at least in the short term — so there are few DISincentives for being “crappy”. The truth is that crooks and scumbags get rich in this industry too so if that is someone’s inclination, or they just can’t be arsed to be decent, then voila! “Do your dirt” isn’t (apparently) a bad idea.

Sorry to say but I suspect another catalyst for the “crappy” is the clientele: most gamblers are perfectly decent folk but a fair percentage aren’t. That “fair percentage” includes people that are desperate, or greedy, or morally challenged, or convinced that the casinos are going to rip them off so they’ll do the ripping off first, or believe they can get rich AND be lazy, or <name your poison>. That crowd can, I think, set the tone.

Just of few thoughts from 25 years in the trenches.

- Max

 

[maxd]

It occurred to me that a little story from yesteryear might help be helpful here.

Some years ago I had the chance to sit down with a senior executive from one of the largest and most notorious casino groups of that era. Their complaints sheet was miles long, ridiculously so, and had been for years. Needless to say we'd made a point of letting everyone know it. It got so bad that one of their guys used to follow Bryan around at the conferences, desperately trying to get his attention. Every now and then Bryan would give the guy a few minutes and it was basically just begging, the guy pleading for their casinos to be let off the hook, given a break, could Bryan please understand, whatever.

The trouble was that this casino group had made non-payment an art-form: any excuse or BS story was fair game as far as they were concerned. “Always offer big bonuses, use every trick in the book to stall payment” must have been the banner over their Support department because that’s all they ever did.

So yeah, eventually I’d sitting with the guy because they had recently made a number of improvements and were now asking to be taken seriously. “Why?” I asked him, “why the nickle-and-dime, no-pay BS for all these years?” “It’s a business model,” he said, and went on to say that most of their clientele were — my words not his — low-roller chancers chasing bonuses and freebies to cobble together a few bucks at minimal risk. Given that, he argued, “our business model makes sense” and added softly “we’ve made a lot of money from it.” I sputtered and floundered for a decent reply to that but the weight of what he’d just said more or less killed the conversation, for a while.

Of course it was a chicken-and-egg problem — which came first, the “crappy" customers wanting money for nothing or the crappy casino not paying them? — but the point is that they deserved each other. Where else would those customers go that they’d be welcomed and understood, and tolerated? And who if not them would put up with the casino’s endless no-pay BS? It was its own little ecosystem at the low end of the scene and the guy was quite right in calling it what it was, “a business model”.

- Max

 

[jasonuk]

It feels like that's where the "can't stand a bet" mentality has come from, particularly in the past 5 years.

They will of course frame it in the worst possible light - the abusers, the leeches, the gnomers (multiple accounts) - but they're also describing players who are frugal, who are smart with their bankroll management, or advantage players who don't break the rules but can outsmart them on the mathematics (which is not "bonus abuse", a term made up for casinos that want any arbitrary excuse to get rid of a player).

The problem is, there's a line between a "business model" and outright fraud - and in many cases such sites willingly cross the line because there's no comeback. The "regulator" (if one exists) doesn't care, the legal system doesn't care because nobody is willing to launch legal action half way across the world, and by taking the payment processors out of the equation (by using crypto) then they don't have to care either.

And when there's a willing stream of dodgy affiliates willing to promote the latest fly-by-night (including some based in the UK, despite that being illegal), and a "willing" stream of mugs, addicts, and misinformed players willing to donate their gambling deposits to a black hole... then the scams will keep coming because they are insanely profitable.

Roobet has been covered in depth for their fake slot streamers and other behaviour - including on channels such as Coffeezilla (the crypto scam investigator). However Stake seems to get more of a pass because they have big names like Drake, many people missing that all they have done is taken the same con trick and amplified it a hundred-fold.

The international nature of such scams also make it more difficult to prosecute - you'd need sufficient cooperation between multiple law enforcement agencies, and as long as the first (usually Curacao) ignores the problem, the rest will have difficulty taking action. Curacao has ignored the problem to the extent the Netherlands have had to step in to avoid the FATF blacklist.

Only have to look at the CSGO roulette sites of a few years back - very few people were prosecuted for it (I recall one from the UK) and while it has introduced new rules on disclosure, it's somewhat missed the point that these were not regulated gambling sites, but fraudulent operations - some of which were known to be cheating players with fixed results.

We are very slowly starting to see action on some of the newer crypto scams - but the wheels turn slowly and it could be 2-3 years for results of investigations started recently, for things that happened 2-3 years ago. With the clock ticking, the fraudsters know they only have the beat the clock... and (e.g.) 6-7 years is not a long time for the good guys to catch the bad guys when there is a chronic lack of expertise.

 

[johnnymcc1966]

Just seen this message from CasinoMeister, "There is a crap company you need to be aware of:".....

And to be honest, I have been thinking this lately, why iGaming Industry from all angles (players, casinos, affiliates) have been a black sheep industry? Experienced CM members thoughts?

I published my first site in 1998. Have been in all sorts of niches, from music to internet security, classic e-commerce & adult – You name it. In adult, I have never ever missed a check, or have been shaved by a company.

Contrary, in iGaming I have seen it all. From all perspectives. Shaving reputable affiliates, rogue online casinos, bonus abuse players, scummy affiliates, – all sorts of scams.

Why is that? Nature of the industry, or........?

I think I have spotted your adult site fetish!

 

[ultra100]

“Because they can” comes to mind.

Probably, the one short sentence that explains it all. Thanks for summing it up @maxd

 

[ultra100]

I think I have spotted your adult site fetish!

Close, close.....but not really


Fetishes' in adult, are somehow close to fetishes in gaming - like to get a "D" in BTG Bonanza base game.