Microgaming - A Time to Act!

There is no doubt that 2009 has been a tough year for the online gambling industry. With the full force of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act taking affect, late 2008 saw Microgaming powered casinos and online poker rooms stop accepting new players from the United States.

Hot on the heels of this announcement the Grand Prive Casino Group notified all their affiliate partners that they were shutting down their affiliate program with affect from 1st December 2008. Stating that from that point onwards no affiliate payments would be paid to their affiliate partners, even though the vast majority agreed to the terms and conditions that the affiliate would receive the lifetime value of the player.

This action by this one casino group which uses Microgaming Software has meant that hundreds if not thousands of Grand Prive's affiliate partners, have had confiscated from them hundreds of thousands of dollars to this point in time. Indeed the amount could be even higher.

So why should the player be concerned about this? Well quite simply, if a casino reneges on a contract with their partners, it sets a worrying precedent. What is to stop the casino doing the same to their players?

Fast forward 10 months and Grand Prive is still operating, despite being blacklisted by countless casino portals across the internet. In short Grand Prive are still feeding off the player base provided to them by their marketing partners which they left out in the cold.

Having worked for 5 years for probably the largest Microgaming Casino in Ladbrokes ( I was there from the start and worked very closely with MGS as I was part of Ladbroke's IT Team ), I know exactly what was entailed to enable Ladbrokes to obtain a licence.

The due dilgence that Ladbrokes had to go through, was extremely rigourous. Back in 2000 when Ladbrokes Casino was launched, to run a casino powered by microgaming was a very hard feat to achieve. In short, obtaining the right to use Microgaming's software was harder than obtaining a gaming licence in many jurisdictions.

Now as an affiliate and I might add a player, I find it incredulous that Microgaming have somehow let their once high standards drop, allowing their players and affiliates of microgaming powered online casinos which have gone to the wall left hung out to dry.

The casino that has gone to the wall most recently is EuroLinx.

Microgaming charge a high percentage on profit of all their operators each and every month. They have a moral obligation to ensure the players at Eurolinx get paid out in full. They also could have stopped Grand Prive stealing the monies from all their affiliate partners. Yet they have done nothing, absolutely nothing.

Shame on you Microgaming. Your inaction is a bad reflection on your decent upstanding operators. Who should be mortified that your lack of leadership on these issues is indirectly affecting them.

The APCW are in the process of investigating Microgaming and their inaction, plus their link to ecogra.

Microgaming in my opinion is still the best casino software on the net. All the Microgaming Casinos which are featured on Online Casino Reviewer are all upstanding operations.

Yet Microgaming's lack of actions or public comments on Eurolinx, Tusk and Grand Prive is doing a great disservice to all the good reputable operators that use their software.

Microgaming do the right thing!