There has been a fire smoldering with occasional flare-ups in online casinoland since “katie91” reported on Casinomeister http://www.casinomeister.com/forums/casino-complaints-non-bonus-issues/54475-finsoft-spielo-g2-games-rigged-rogue-software.html that she had been playing rigged games at Betfred. It had been shaping up into a game of toss the dynamite back and forth from casino to software to regulator to regulator, and although it has been fleshed out now to some degree, we still don’t know exactly “who done it”!

You can read a synopsis of the course of events on our GTECH G2 software review page if the 50 some odd pages at Casinomeister are a bit too much to digest as a primer. There is no way to know how this will end up or who will ultimately shoulder the blame – one thing is for sure, it is not going away.

This writer is of the opinion that responsibility is widespread. The casinos are required by their licenses http://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/images/stories/PDF/gaming/remote_technical_and_operating_standards.pdf to test games before deploying them. The regulators are mandated to enforce their own rules, the games provider (in this case Finsoft/SpeiloG2) has at least a moral obligation to provide a fair game, and the original game developer has at least a moral obligation to ensure their assets are being deployed properly.

This brings us to the original designer of Reel Deal and Hi/Lo Gambler, the two games that started this maelstrom; Realistic Games. In their response to Eliot Jacobson (Certified Fair Gaming) which he published on the Wizard of Vegas online casino forum http://wizardofvegas.com/forum/gambling/online/12505-gaffed-software-at-major-internet-casinos/2/#post208353 , one of the aspects of the games they were willing to discuss with him was bullet point #5 which states, “Why 2 versions exist e.g. x1.95 & x2”. Now we can’t deduce any motive here, but it is a question that begs to be answered. Did Realistic provide two variants to Finsoft/SpeiloG2? If so, please DO tell us why!

Some of the fallout of this fiasco has been the removal of Betfred and possibly other casinos from the Casinomeister Accredited Casinos list, blacklisting by Michael Shackleford (the Wizard of Odds) http://wizardofodds.com/online-gambling/blacklist/index.php#spielo and player advocate site, thePOGG, not only blacklisting all casinos using SpeiloG2 provided games http://thepogg.com/blacklist/ but direct intervention with the regulators to resolve the issue. We have yet to see what Casinomeister will do beyond removing the casino(s) from his recommended list.