DraftKings fined for online slot incapable of generating a win
gamblingindustrynews.com
gamblingindustrynews.com
15ish years ago my states gaming commission would literally pull EEPROMS, stick em in a box, and make sure the Hashes corresponded to 'audited and approved' code (while also checking that win rates were set within regulations).
Trying to be as fair as possible: the fact that this customer is a VIP may be enough reason for sending them to a gambling addiction service. But having said that, I wish there were more resources for cases like these when you know you're in the right and yet the company refuses to listen.
At least in Europe the GDPR offers some recourse.
But I agree that they deserve suspicion.
Their handling of a player being banned and referred to resources for a gambling addiction is probably the crappiest part of their response imo
Jeez. Talk about opportunity cost.
it is a bit sketchy they did not inform any players of the reason for the refund, but im not sure how they could have handled this better. what are your thoughts
No one should need to tell you that an easily measurable and obviously critical metric is wrong. You should have alerting in place for that. A difference of 95% to 0% should light up like a Christmas tree.
If you release a game that's impossible to win, you didn't do a meaningful amount of testing or QA when it hit production. I assume a dev played at least one game as a sanity check, but they didn't sit there and play until they won. A QA person wouldn't sign off on something if they only observed 1 of the 2 states it should reach.
SLOT_GAME_WIN_FRACTION=0.95
$win_fraction = (float) getenv('SLOT_GAME_WIN_FRACTION');
Immediately alert the relevant oversight body, and notify the players about the problem when issuing the refunds. Providing adequate detail in both cases.
At least, that sounds like the right approach to me though I'm just guessing. :)
Gambling is already bad enough when it is done fairly. It's essentially a license to scam people. But it's absolutely disgusting that it is even possible to turn that into outright stealing. Why is not not mandatory for them to publish full reports on all rolls so that it can be verified whether it matches their advertised odds?
Well... just rig the machines again to give out $23,000 to the players over a handful of games!
It _sounds_ like the fine is a result of them failing to inform users of why the refund was issued (honestly it seems like saying "hey, we found an issue, we've refunded your gambling" seems like a better bet from a customer appreciation PoV, but maybe they were concerned about lawsuits or something? but going a step further and saying "hey we found a bug, so we've refunded your bets because the bug means the game was unfair[1], and here's $50 credit on your account" seems like it would do much better, and be functionally free because it would encourage more gambling)
[1] Gambling like this is fundamentally unfair, but there's a weird pretense of fairness that gambling companies are allowed to present to the world for some reason.