The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) assessed a financial penalty of £122,835 on Dutch gaming developer Stakelogic after receiving information that multiple of its slot machine games were not abiding by the minimum spin time standards dictated by UK regulations.
After Stakelogic self-disclosed that their game Tiger Temple 88 was operating at 1.97 seconds to spin, below the minimum time to spin of 2.5 seconds required by UK gambling law, an investigation was conducted and it was confirmed that 15 total games had also failed to comply with the regulations, although the spin time for these games was not as far below the minimum requirements, meaning that they had only minor issues.
The UKGC found that Stakelogic had measured the amount of time it took for their games to spin using a manual stopwatch, which was deemed by the UKGC to be not an appropriate method to measure whether games were operating correctly.
John Pierce, Director of Enforcement and Intelligence at the UKGC, said:
With all the technological resources available to an online gambling business, it is unacceptable that Stakelogic were relying on a manual stopwatch to measure the speed of their games.
The UKGC also indicated that they had identified the issue with regards to Tiger Temple 88 two days after it had operated improperly, but that the game was still available to players for an additional two days prior to being taken down by the UKGC until a fix had been implemented.
The discrepancies in timing ranged from a low of 0.001 seconds to a high of 0.675 seconds. There were multiple games that had times below the minimum standard, many of which were below the minimum standard by only 42 milliseconds. However, all games were deemed non-compliant with the regulatory minimum standards of operation.
John Pierce added:
We would urge all operators to take careful note of this case and ensure they have effective testing practices in place to ensure they are meeting all the standards we require.
As part of the settlement with the UKGC, Stakelogic has agreed to pay £122,835 to the consolidated fund and to reimburse the UKGC for their investigation expenses for the breach. Stakelogic accepted fault for the violation of the gambling laws, cooperated fully in the investigation and made a commitment to enhancing their quality assurance processes and incident management procedures.
