The breach of online gaming regulations was attributed to the use of a stopwatch for compliance testing
Sega Sammy-owned casino games provider Stakelogic has agreed to pay a penalty of £122,835 to the Gambling Commission of Great Britain.
The penalty relates to the speed of Stakelogic’s Tiger Temple 88 game, which was found to have a spin interval of 1.97 seconds.
Under the Gambling Commission’s responsible product design standards, online slot games must have a spin interval of at least 2.5 seconds.
The error in the spin speed was self-reported by Stakelogic.
After notifying the Gambling Commission of the breach, Stakelogic re-tested its entire games portfolio for the British market and found a further 15 games that breached the minimum spin speed requirements by between 0.001 seconds to 0.675 seconds.
An investigation by the Gambling Commission found that Stakelogic’s time measurements were inaccurate because the company relied on a manual stopwatch to measure game speed.
“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,” said Commission director of enforcement and intelligence John Pierce.
“After reporting this error to the Commission, Stakelogic immediately self-suspended the use of the affected games until the error had been rectified. They have subsequently taken significant steps to assure the Commission that they now have robust policies and procedures in place to prevent future breaches from occurring.”
Shares in Stakelogic parent Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. (TYO:6460) closed 0.35 per cent lower at ¥2,143.00 per share in Tokyo Thursday.