UKGC issues penalty to Befred owner for failings in some of their slot games

[conker]

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on the UKGC website:

A gambling business will pay a £240,000 penalty following a regulatory finding that features in some of its online slot games breached industry standards.

Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited – which runs betfred.com and oddsking.com – operated a selection of slot games which failed to meet the requirements of the Remote Technical Standards (RTS). Failings included hosting games which failed to display the consumer’s net position and games which celebrated losses as wins.

It's very rare that you would see a penalty of this nature. Quite often penalties are handed out to operators for AML-related matters or KYC issues.

Interestingly, the slot games involved have been immediately removed. No details of which games they were.

I wonder if we will see more of this type of penalty going forward?

John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement, said:

“Features that impair a consumer’s ability to make informed decisions are not appropriate and pose a clear risk.

“While we acknowledge the operator acted swiftly to remove the affected games, this enforcement action should serve as a clear signal to the wider industry to review and strengthen their compliance practices — and to ensure that gameplay is fair and consumers are not exposed to unnecessary risk."

 

[SpinUk]

In other industries (car, financial) the operator would be made to make good the transaction with the consumer if they didn’t meet regulatory threshold. However, I doubt we will see any refunds soon on these.

 

[dunover]

This whole issue arose first in 2021 when warnings were given about games doing the same thing. It centres around celebratory graphics on any slots whereby the return on any given spin is = or < than the spin cost. Because you ain't won anything. This was the time we saw 'CONGRATULATIONS! You Won 0.00' after dead bonus rounds vanish for good. Which was really irritating and people on here moaned like hell about it, including me!

If you check, nowadays most slots simply just display 0.20 and add it to your balance after say a £1 spin, but some stragglers apparently still used celebratory graphics that flashed and/or used the word 'won' 0.20 when in fact you had actually lost 0.80.

I suggest that the reason they (games) are not named is players would more than likely make spurious claims if they had ever played them but obviously regardless of graphics or the use of 'won' the outcome of the spin remained.

 

[Webzcas]

Nice informative background information Dunover

 

[SpinUk]

This whole issue arose first in 2021 when warnings were given about games doing the same thing. It centres around celebratory graphics on any slots whereby the return on any given spin is = or < than the spin cost. Because you ain't won anything. This was the time we saw 'CONGATULATIONS! You Won 0.00' after dead bonus rounds vanish for good. Which was really irritating and people on here moaned like hell about it, including me!

If you check, nowadays most slots simply just display 0.20 and add it to your balance after say a £1 spin, but some stragglers apparently still used celebratory graphics that flashed and/or used the word 'won' 0.20 when in fact you had actually lost 0.80.

I suggest that the reason they (games) are not named is players would more than likely make spurious claims if they had ever played them but obviously regardless of graphics or the use of 'won' the outcome of the spin remained.

Thats the danger you get when you break your licence terms I guess.

 

[brianmon]

I wonder if the latest version of DOA would fall foul of such rules?
A win of <= stake doesn't state that there was a win. BUT it does do a 5-6 second count-up of the win and looks identical to a > stake win.
I doesn't matter what the win was. It still counts it up over 5-6 seconds. It's quite frustrating to sit and watch the 'win' count from 0 to 4p over 5-6 seconds.

 

[johnnymcc1966]

240k is a pittance to these firms...unless it was a punter trying to make a withdrawal of that size!

 

[steveh35]

..

 

[steveh35]

This whole issue arose first in 2021 when warnings were given about games doing the same thing. It centres around celebratory graphics on any slots whereby the return on any given spin is = or < than the spin cost. Because you ain't won anything. This was the time we saw 'CONGRATULATIONS! You Won 0.00' after dead bonus rounds vanish for good. Which was really irritating and people on here moaned like hell about it, including me!

If you check, nowadays most slots simply just display 0.20 and add it to your balance after say a £1 spin, but some stragglers apparently still used celebratory graphics that flashed and/or used the word 'won' 0.20 when in fact you had actually lost 0.80.

I suggest that the reason they (games) are not named is players would more than likely make spurious claims if they had ever played them but obviously regardless of graphics or the use of 'won' the outcome of the spin remained.

I refer you to my post in screenshots suck clearly this new game didn't get the message in your second paragraph.

 

[dunover]

I refer you to my post in screenshots suck clearly this new game didn't get the message in your second paragraph.
View attachment 212244

Well that game is non-compliant for UK players then. The objective is not to mislead or subliminally suggest to the player thay they aren't losing or haven't lost money.

 

[steveh35]

This whole issue arose first in 2021 when warnings were given about games doing the same thing. It centres around celebratory graphics on any slots whereby the return on any given spin is = or < than the spin cost. Because you ain't won anything. This was the time we saw 'CONGRATULATIONS! You Won 0.00' after dead bonus rounds vanish for good. Which was really irritating and people on here moaned like hell about it, including me!

If you check, nowadays most slots simply just display 0.20 and add it to your balance after say a £1 spin, but some stragglers apparently still used celebratory graphics that flashed and/or used the word 'won' 0.20 when in fact you had actually lost 0.80.

I suggest that the reason they (games) are not named is players would more than likely make spurious claims if they had ever played them but obviously regardless of graphics or the use of 'won' the outcome of the spin remained.

I have just played TaDa's new game Sweet Magic I bet 3p (by accident I thought it was 30p) and got a big win fuss graphic with the fanfare for winning..... 27p.

 

[dunover]

I have just played TaDa's new game Sweet Magic I bet 3p (by accident I thought it was 30p) and got a big win fuss graphic with the fanfare for winning..... 27p.

9x, that's actually worth celebrating.

 

[steveh35]

9x, that's actually worth celebrating.

As I said I thought it was 30p and they had given me a 27p hooray but it seems they have decided to reduce the stakes on some of there games to 1, 2 and 3p for whatever reason.