Online casinos have been a big feature throughout the past year particular as many different services have found a huge surge in new players as many find some here as the most popular sites have only continued to rise. Whilst there had been some restrictions early on as advertising remained limited to prevent those most at risk – but there are plenty of other changes that have been put forward with slots being a particular target moving forward in hopes of implementation by October 2021.

Through much of the research that has been done, slots have typically fallen to the bottom of the pile and been statistically amongst the worst odds of winning for all casino games, and the commission has largely focussed on slots in particular because of this with the highest average losses per player – to combat this, the commission has outlined four features that are to be banned by the end of the year;

• Features that speed up play or give the illusion of control over the outcome are to be removed – this includes features like turbo spins which speed up the passage of play.
• Slot spin speeds faster than 2.5 seconds – much for the same reason, any slots that are designed to spin much faster are to be removed too to limit the passage of play.
• Auto play features which can lead to players losing track of their play – this includes auto-spins and other features that can also relate to turbo features; and
• Sounds or imagery which give the illusion of a win when the return is in fact equal to, or below, a stake.

Many of the changes are quite self-explanatory, and all with the goal of making the services as fair as possible whilst also reducing many of the aspects that draw players in, and there have also been allotments made for other changes to be included;

• Operators must clearly display to the player their total losses or wins, and time played during any online slots’ session – this is to help players track the time spent playing and to reduce over playing from those most at risk.
• A permanent ban on reverse withdrawals for all online gambling – a feature that previously allowed players to re-gamble money request to be withdrawn.

It’s certainly a strong step forward for many online services, and a few of many that will likely be put in place throughout the coming years as well as more transparency is to be expected alongside more favour for players, to reduce the house odds and to provide a more fair online gambling experience as a whole.