The UK Gambling Commission Issues Warning to Operators

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has issued a warning to the online gambling operators. The warning states that the operators should confirm whether their games meet the transparency and safety standards that are supposed to be met.

The UKGC issued the warning after finding out that six of the operators were offering products with the ‘feature buy-in’ facilities on slots style games.

The features in question offered players the opportunity of staking significant amounts to access the bonus feature and skip playing the initial stages of the base game. The Commission said that one game in particular was charging over £3000 for players to enter the bonus feature.

The Warning

The United Kingdom regulator issued its published remote gambling and software technical standards together with the warning. The standards state the following:

“RTS requirement 3A: An explanation of the applicable rules must be easily available to the customer before they commit to gamble. The content including artwork and text must be accurate, and sufficient to explain all of the applicable rules and how to participate. All reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that the content is understandable.

RTS requirement 14A: Gambling products must not actively encourage customers to chase their losses, increase their stake or increase the amount they have decided to gamble, or continue to gamble after they have indicated that they wish to stop.”

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission said that The six operators who offered the feature buy-ins and to whom the warning were issued have now removed it from their sites.

This is not the first warning, as of recent, the UKGC has given, having issued a notice to operators to improve interaction with VIP customers earlier this month.

Source:

“UK online gambling ops warned re ‘feature buy-in’ bonus shortcuts”, Steven Stradbrooke, calvinayre.com, January 17, 2020.