The CEO and Founder of Betsmart Consulting, Kirsty Campbell, recently sat down with the CCO and Founder of g.games, Helen Walton, to discuss the industry impact of the proposed changes to Remote Gambling and Software Standards (RTS) published in July 2023 by the Gambling Commission.
Headline changes published following the Gambling White Paper Consultations include a minimum spin duration of five seconds for all casino games, except slots and poker, which will remain at 2.5 seconds and extending the prohibition of autoplay and celebrating wins equal to or less than the initial stake to include all casino games.
Giving her opinions on the changes, Walton says that she thinks some of the changes make sense whereas others don’t.
Speaking more specifically about the five-second spin rule, she said: “If you’re just extending them across the board to every casino game, why would you change it to double the time from 2.5 to five seconds? And as far as I can tell, that doesn’t actually come from any data that suggests these games are twice as likely to cause harm or need to be played twice as slowly for some reason.”
She also questions the logic of putting all game types other than slots and poker into the same category as they all have different features and requirements.
Walton then talks about the unintended consequences that these changes could have as she explains that suppliers may pull games such as video bingo from their UK portfolio as it would not be profitable to make the changes needed to comply with the rules.
As a result, she speculates that this could lead to operators migrating players to game types such as slots and poker.
The pair then move on to discuss how the impact of the changes will be monitored by the gambling commission and Walton questions the will of the gambling commission to look at the “granular data” required to spot the unintended consequences like player migration.
She added: “This is no criticism of the commission. But I think I think it’s human nature to not want to go searching for data that shows that you are wrong. Yet that’s how you do good research, you go searching for data to confirm that you’ve made a positive impact. But you also go searching for data to say, if there were to be a negative impact, what would it be and where would I find that?”
They also touch on the potential rise of black market websites which they say will be able to provide a better user experience as they are not constrained by the RTS changes.
Finishing off the chat, Walton urges the gambling commission to provide guidance on the changes they have made and what they anticipate the intended impact will be.
