Please note that the World Casino Directory may or may not agree with any of the following and that this is the opinion of the reviewer only. Therefor if anyone from the game developer to the Gambling Commissioner or even the Minister of Finance finds anything objectionable or untrue (which you will and which you won’t) your only remedy is with my person, not the provider of the web space I will use to publish my well-formed opinion that is based entirely on fact and very reasonable assumptions derived from available facts.
The following opinion, harsh as it may be, will not swim so far offshore as to tread the waters of slander or libel, but may scathingly condemn. 

Without a true Statement of Facts (dry data, objective conclusions, course of action, summation) from the regulators  –  players and industry analysts are quite reasonably  expected to assume that the current game certification process is incapable of catching such blatant, glaring and serious errors as we have seen exposed since December 2012 that resulted  in an untold losses to players over millions of games spanning almost a decade.

Contary to published regulations (to the best of our knowledge) it would appear as if RTP % and possibly pay tables were changed without any required notification to players. We still don’t know with whom the failure lies; did Realistic provide two versions to Finsoft who unwittingly passed them on or did Finsoft alter the code, introducing an error followed by another code change that made the so-called “Help-Files” display erroneous information in a “dynamic pay table”?

Why was this mistake so easily passed onto the players, and why has no compensation been offered? If the licensee did not test the games who did? Anyone? And if they were tested where are the hard data? Where is the analytical  summary and where is the professional conclusion? Where is the assurance that these game were, by the very nature of the regulatory requirements, anomalies and likely to be the only such “untested”, “uncertified” and “unfair” games available at online casinos bearing the seal of a proper regulatory authority?

Reasonable minds can draw more conclusions than those mentioned as well. The first is obvious and well illustrated by the three “unofficial” official public responses to the issue. The regulator has no clue about the simplest of gaming maths as illustrated in his rhetorical question about how some of the expectations are possible. We also see a history of protecting gaming sites rather than neutrality or player protection if mainstream news reports and uncontested forum posts spanning several years are to be believed.

A reasonable mind can also assume that if millions of games have been played on a machine that illustrated (advertised) one result and delivered another, that someone profited and someone suffered loss whether there was any fraudulent intent or not. Millions of games, spanning almost ten years; hardly “insignificant”.

The fact that neither the games provider nor most of the casinos who profited volunteered to make players whole tells us all we need to know about GTECH and about those casinos. The fact that the regulator did not compel them to get “unearned” gains off their balance sheets by sanction, donation to charity, or reimbursement to players tells us all we need to know about the regulator.

Players do not share the Gibraltar Commissioner’s opinion that this is “insignificant” in any respect. Gaming, is by its very nature, a matter of trust. Casinos must rely on their game providers to give them a fair edge and players must be able to trust casinos to deliver a fair game. All of us need to be able to trust a regulatory regime that looks after the interests of both parties who choose to engage in a cordial yet adversarial relationship. Player/casino relationships are adversarial because we want their money and they want ours.

Game suppliers and casinos seem to hold all of the cards. The regulator is supposed to be our assurance that those cards are fair. Far from discouraging cheating the GGC may have placed the last straw on the collective players’ back that takes many over the line to say to themselves, “They ‘accidentally cheated’ and got away with the money, I’ll have a flutter at that myself and play dumb if I get caught – after all it ended up okay to run a false game because a cheater exposed it, so why should I not cheat the cheater cheated by the cheat”.

We opened a blog post with one word to describe the Commissioner’s first response and that was “Travesty”. We will close the subject after two more “official” responses with two words, “Epic Fail”.

 

NB  If you know of any factual errors contained in this article please comment or contact us with corrections. If you have a supporting or qualified contrary opinion we will be glad to examine it.