What's happened/happening with Microgaming?

[Valhalla]

I've noticed that all their best IPs have been both nerfed and/or published by other developers (TSII, Immortal Romance etc).
You rarely find classic MG games on casinos nowadays, they don't seem to release any new ones either unless I'm not looking hard enough. Are they closed down or dormant or something? Used to be my favourite games but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed playing a Microgaming Slot.

 

[weesie]

Before they "legally" excluded USA, I loved Cash Splash! Was my all time favorite. I still think about that slot.

 

[brianmon]

I've noticed that all their best IPs have been both nerfed and/or published by other developers (TSII, Immortal Romance etc).
You rarely find classic MG games on casinos nowadays, they don't seem to release any new ones either unless I'm not looking hard enough. Are they closed down or dormant or something? Used to be my favourite games but I can't remember the last time I enjoyed playing a Microgaming Slot.

MGS sold all their games and back catalogue to Games Global Ltd.
Who DO seem to have nerfed the games, and for some reason, have messed with the actual coding.

The Michael feature on IR now flashes any winning symbols for up to 15 seconds before removing them and dropping the next symbols from above down.
Ofen not even dropping symbols, leaving just a black square.

On the wildstorm and wild desire features on TSII and IR. The reels where the wilds had been, often go blank on the next spin and stay blank for any following spins.

These faults started as soon as the loading screens changed from Microgaming to Games Global.

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

 

[KasinoKing]

Such a shame as they were definitely the WORLD LEADER in online games back in the old Viper Download days!
But just like many other of my old favourite softwares and games, they are gone forever

KK

 

[slot_zombie]

Most of the MG classic games are available as "Games Global Portfolio" releases.

Games Global IS the old Microgaming, rebranded.

But the days of new, sublime MG 243-way epic slots are gone. They are now just a publisher of other Devs.

 

[dunover]

Games Global is Microgaming now, which incorporates all the partner studios using the old MG interface/platform (Quickfire) like Gameburger, Crazy Tooth Studio, Just For The Win, Fortune Factory, Switch, All41, Plank Gaming, Slingshot, StormCraft, Triple Edge Studios, Neon Valley and Pulse8 etc.

Oh! for the old Viper client returning....

 

[Jono777]

Games Global is Microgaming now, which incorporates all the partner studios using the old MG interface/platform (Quickfire) like Gameburger, Crazy Tooth Studio, Just For The Win, Fortune Factory, Switch, All41, Plank Gaming, Slingshot, StormCraft, Triple Edge Studios, Neon Valley and Pulse8 etc.

Oh! for the old Viper client returning....

hell yeah!

 

[brianmon]

Games Global Isn't Microgaming or any kind of rebranding.
The games portfolio was bought from Microgaming

"Games Global is a privately backed company led by CEO Walter Bugno, formerly of IGT and Lottomatica, and CFO Tim Mickley, previously of SafeCharge and Playtech."

Microgaming still exists, but is just concentrating on providing platforms

 

[goatwack]

Yes, a cursory glance at their barren website does indeed indicate that they're still kicking around, having seemingly freed themselves from their slotting content to focus on......providing cyberdyne solutions or some shit (i.e nothing).

There's no hope of Microgaming rekindling its past glories, let alone make any new software, as they're MG in name only, possibly in part down to losing their standing in the slotting space to newer rivals, the BTGs and NLCs of this world etc.

Which in itself would be bearable for the end-user, if the games were maintained, preserved and treated with some respect.....yet judging from the above, it's a bleeding of these games, with many of them being made worse in the process.

And yet, Viper clients could still be a implemented? Imagine having that breadth of games and dedicated fanbase clamouring for its return.....

 

[irish-ranger]

Before they "legally" excluded USA, I loved Cash Splash! Was my all time favorite. I still think about that slot.

Ahh cash splash my first night online gambling I hit that game for 5k..

 

[ChopleyIOM]

As an aside, I can only assume Microgaming are doing rather well, their headquarters is just up the road from where I work in Douglas (they're IOM based), and they are currently in the process of upgrading their two main buildings (again), Sim City style, and the funky skybridge thing they built that links the two appears to be getting a reworking as well.

Next time I'm in town I'll take a couple of pictures.

It's not unusual to see cars parked outside that cost north of £250K either.

 

[brianmon]

As an aside, I can only assume Microgaming are doing rather well, their headquarters is just up the road from where I work in Douglas (they're IOM based), and they are currently in the process of upgrading their two main buildings (again), Sim City style, and the funky skybridge thing they built that links the two appears to be getting a reworking as well.

Next time I'm in town I'll take a couple of pictures.

It's not unusual to see cars parked outside that cost north of £250K either.

After selling off all their games, there'll be a bit of spare cash to splash around now.

 

[jasonuk]

The Michael feature on IR now flashes any winning symbols for up to 15 seconds before removing them and dropping the next symbols from above down.
Ofen not even dropping symbols, leaving just a black square.

On the wildstorm and wild desire features on TSII and IR. The reels

Another provider that couldn't handle the HTML5 migration - at least they had a few attempts at it so it's mostly there (but as you say, still some issues particularly around the bonuses) and a country mile better than say WMS/Shite N Blunder who still have games that lock up on certain wins...

I appreciate it would take some time for them to get these games sorted, especially if it is an unfamiliar tech stack... but we're a fair few years in now so these games are going to be left half-baked and a shadow of their former glory.

Not a fault - at least initially - of Games Global in this case, those problems happened years prior - but an early sign that MG (the games developer) was going out with a whimper, not a bang...

 

[jasonuk]

Also while having a read of the article, two things of interest: the

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.

and then looking at their post-GG press releases, they've only had three in 18 months - two about Safer Gambling Week, and a third where their CEO has stepped down and been replaced.

It will be interesting to see what happens next - will they do an SG and start chasing the market rather than defining it (Battleships Megaways from SG was a perfect example of this - a colossal waste of an IP), will they find their feet again or will they disappear in the ever-growing sea of providers releasing the same old dross.

 

[mcgameboy]

Games Global Isn't Microgaming or any kind of rebranding.
The games portfolio was bought from Microgaming

"Games Global is a privately backed company led by CEO Walter Bugno, formerly of IGT and Lottomatica, and CFO Tim Mickley, previously of SafeCharge and Playtech."

Microgaming still exists, but is just concentrating on providing platforms

Aha.....so THERE'S the reasons why MG's 243 ways games have turned to nerfed ratshit abominational versions of their former glorious selves....

 

[lockinlove]

Yep me and a few friends were talking about this a couple months ago how MG is all garbage and ruined all their good games. As soon as I saw IGT..it all made sense. Its really really sad because alot of those games were amazing. You rarely ever see big win screenshots anywhere now from MG because they have been tampered with.

I will forever miss the viper client too.

 

[brianmon]

Another provider that couldn't handle the HTML5 migration - at least they had a few attempts at it so it's mostly there (but as you say, still some issues particularly around the bonuses) and a country mile better than say WMS/Shite N Blunder who still have games that lock up on certain wins...

I appreciate it would take some time for them to get these games sorted, especially if it is an unfamiliar tech stack... but we're a fair few years in now so these games are going to be left half-baked and a shadow of their former glory.

Not a fault - at least initially - of Games Global in this case, those problems happened years prior - but an early sign that MG (the games developer) was going out with a whimper, not a bang...

The thing is though. IR and TSII, had got sorted (to a degree) and were working ok.
The issues I mentioned, started straight after the Games Global name first appeared on the loading screen. So it looks like someone's been tinkering with the code and messed something else up.

 

[jasonuk]

You rarely ever see big win screenshots anywhere now from MG because they have been tampered with.

I wouldn't say that is the reason. Microgaming always kept the monster pays suitably rare (hundreds of millions of spins, even billions of spins), which is a very different philosophy to some of the modern providers - not only are they putting orders of magnitude (10x, 100x) more RTP into those big wins, but the monopoly money crowd can skip that tedium by using bonus buys.

Which is funny, when some of the biggest pays in the world (as multiplication of stake) have come from... Microgaming's Mega Moolah. Who needs a scripted slot pillaging your balance in search of a scripted 150000x win, when The Dark Knight Mega Moolah (rip) was capable of smashing out millions of times stake - even if it took months or years (!) at a time to drop.

When we are talking about Microgaming tinkering with the games - the majority of the conversation refers to the botched HTML5 conversions - graphical bugs that impact visuals and speed of play, but not the underlying result. Of course this assumes you are playing the full fat versions, the lower RTP models - including the revised Mega Moolah at some god-awful percentage - will play differently.

 

[dunover]

I wouldn't say that is the reason. Microgaming always kept the monster pays suitably rare (hundreds of millions of spins, even billions of spins), which is a very different philosophy to some of the modern providers - not only are they putting orders of magnitude (10x, 100x) more RTP into those big wins, but the monopoly money crowd can skip that tedium by using bonus buys.

Which is funny, when some of the biggest pays in the world (as multiplication of stake) have come from... Microgaming's Mega Moolah. Who needs a scripted slot pillaging your balance in search of a scripted 150000x win, when The Dark Knight Mega Moolah (rip) was capable of smashing out millions of times stake - even if it took months or years (!) at a time to drop.

When we are talking about Microgaming tinkering with the games - the majority of the conversation refers to the botched HTML5 conversions - graphical bugs that impact visuals and speed of play, but not the underlying result. Of course this assumes you are playing the full fat versions, the lower RTP models - including the revised Mega Moolah at some god-awful percentage - will play differently.

Yes, a forum member here actually got the 5-reel Shitstorm on Thunderstruck II for over 8k x bet, it was briefly mentioned in the past so you may not have heard about it, the screenshot hasn't been reposted for a year or so.....

But as for saying the bugs and html5 versions of IR and TSII were resolved, maybe so but the trimmed-down html5 versions look as dull as ditchwater, like a Christmas tree in the new year when the decorations have been removed and reboxed and the tree is a faded dry shadow of its formerly festooned self, ready for chucking in the garden waste bin.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Yes, a forum member here actually got the 5-reel Shitstorm on Thunderstruck II for over 8k x bet, it was briefly mentioned in the past so you may not have heard about it, the screenshot hasn't been reposted for a year or so.....

But as for saying the bugs and html5 versions of IR and TSII were resolved, maybe so but the trimmed-down html5 versions look as dull as ditchwater, like a Christmas tree in the new year when the decorations have been removed and reboxed and the tree is a faded dry shadow of its formerly festooned self, ready for chucking in the garden waste bin.

Yeah I had a rant about this in a couple of videos on my old channel, IR in particular in its HTML5 form (even after a reworking or two) was still shite compared to the Viper Client original. (I know someone who works at MG and I complained to him bitterly about the shittification that their classics were suffering a few years ago, he told me at the time IR was getting another pass and they did improve it, but it was still crap, and I told him so, he seemed slightly offended.)

My suspicion is they were trying to reduce the data payload, so the games load quicker on mobile devices, as the days of the Viper Client cheerfully creating a hidden folder on your PC and quietly downloading gigabytes and gigabytes of data in the background for its game store (that's what it used to do, BTW) are of course long gone. I noticed this when I got my first SSD boot drive for my PC, it was only 120GB (they were bastard expensive back then!) and I noticed a load of space had mysteriously disappeared off it - so I went hunting and found the hidden MGS folder (It wasn't a terrible idea in and of itself, the problem was it used a hardcoded location on the boot drive, and there was no option to farm it off to a data drive, short of using a symbolic link in Windows or suchlike.)

So yes, on the HTML5 versions the frames of animation had been much reduced, like when you get 5OAKs on the main characters, they were smooth and fluid on the Viper Client version, but are all jerky and fuzzy on the HTML5 versions, and even the bitrate on the audio sounds like it's been reduced as well.

I've still got some videos from back in 2014 from an even older YT channel of mine, when I had four of the MG 243-wayers running simultaneously in the Viper Client - good times! (I'll get around to reuploading them at some point.)

 

[Jono777]

Yes, a forum member here actually got the 5-reel Shitstorm on Thunderstruck II for over 8k x bet, it was briefly mentioned in the past so you may not have heard about it, the screenshot hasn't been reposted for a year or so.....

But as for saying the bugs and html5 versions of IR and TSII were resolved, maybe so but the trimmed-down html5 versions look as dull as ditchwater, like a Christmas tree in the new year when the decorations have been removed and reboxed and the tree is a faded dry shadow of its formerly festooned self, ready for chucking in the garden waste bin.

Try 3-4, how time flies eh?

Its actually stuck on a slave drive which I had to disconnect a good while back as it started randomly causing a boot loop, in other words lost forever my end, so you're all safe from that one lol

Another thing I never understood is that an educated guess would have me think due to their popularity these games made an absolute fortune for them (flash / viper) so from a business perspective, as their imaginary CEO, I would have though priority number one would to to ensure the HTML5 transition created perfect copies, no matter what it took....

 

[09237653]

They killed off so many of their classic games, and all the new releases are RTP nerfed at most casinos and mostly crap games anyway, the golden days of mg are over.
big mistake not converting all of their classic games to HTML5 without adding RTP changes- if they still had that huge catalog of high 96% games they might still be relevant now.

 

[jasonuk]

big mistake not converting all of their classic games to HTML5 without adding RTP changes- if they still had that huge catalog of high 96% games they might still be relevant now.

I assume they would have had a fight on anyway given the absurd number of providers out there now-a-days... especially if they're not willing to compromise their integrity and scrape the barrel as a number of other providers have promoting games through monopoly money streamers and/or shithole jurisdictions (as in worse than curacao).

It's funny that one "popular" provider appears frequently on both lists, although I wouldn't agree that their view was pragmatic...