Topic: Have game providers started limiting Europe? (Read 218 times)

It is not restricted on the gambling site if it was restricted on the gambling site then you could not see the link of the game on the site. Actually it is restricted the on your country or province. It might be happened based on the terms of your country and based on the terms of the game provider.

Sometimes imposing law delayed by enforcing officials and maybe there's changes of personnel happen that's why the they are strengthen up the law and now they are going after with those unregulated casinos in their jurisdiction.

Its crazy that this situation happen since its like they are limiting the operation of those casino and they want to eliminate those small ones then only entertain those companies that can pay huge money to them. Although there's chances that people might see fewer promotion and other things that can entertain them, but for sure those well funded casino would still launch something that can entertain their gamblers since somehow for sure they would think that getting good impression is needed to attract gamblers to play on their casino. Its just EU people will expect that they would undergo on KYC procedures since this is what has been asked by their government.

I am not from Europe but I also bumped into some fishy notifications from slot providers and I think this is because they are trying to avoid their games being tampered with.
That's actually the first time I saw it and it's from our local online gambling application where PG Soft has a notification to make sure if the game is really theirs and once clicked it will go directly to some site (I am not sure if that is their website) and it will tell you it's legitimate. Or, you can just ignore it and play directly. I am not sure though if that's the case or if it's just plain area restriction.
Thank you for this.
So we cannot say it's the whole continent. It's country-based restrictions and regulations.

Even popular casino limits Europe player to access the casino so I’m not surprised if some of the game providers limit them since UK and EU has their own gambling license which is required for operators to acquire before they can operate.

They are almost same with US when it comes to regulation with online casino so popular global brand don’t dare to touch them to avoid legal problem in the future.

I believe most the Curacao license casino ban EU players.

Maybe it's because Stake has their own domain for US and UK citizen? although it's not EU, but this mean they're more regulated compared to other crypto casinos.

However, the good thing is government didn't ban crypto casinos and they choose to allow it as long as they follow the regulations. This hurt people for care with their privacy, but it's the choice for the owner to make their casino survive.

Unlike mixer who technically not illegal, but they can't comply with the regulation, otherwise they will turn to be honey pot instead of mixer.

Yes, but this is not new, the obligation has existed for years. The massive regulations in Europe whereby in order to be able to offer online gambling to players from European countries you need a country-specific licence were passed more than ten years ago.

The thing is that when they were passed, legislators didn't even know that cryptocurrencies existed, and they have been unchecked until relatively recently. The future is either not being able to play in cryptocurrency casinos (except by skipping the law and the ToS of the rooms) or that some casinos start paying European state licenses, so you will have to pass KYC from the beginning and it will be more expensive: casinos will have more House Edge, will give fewer promotions (to amortise the license and pay state taxes) and you will have to pay tax on top of that if you make a profit, plus it remains to be seen how the issue of intra-casino swaps will be resolved. I mean, if you buy bitcoin, it goes up and you exchange it for USDT, you have to pay taxes on the capital gain, and this is something that is typically done in casinos.

The same thing also applies to Greece; the majority of cryptocurrency casinos are blocked, supposedly because they're not licensed as they claim, but in reality it's because they can't collect taxes from them. The OP's case is something I haven't encountered, though. I'm used to being restricted from casinos for the reasons I mentioned earlier, but not having specific games or parts of the casino unavailable due to my location. That's quite unusual if you ask me. Does this also occur if you use a private DNS, such as Cloudflare? It's the one I'm frequently using, and I can't help but wonder what restrictions are being placed. Europe is a huge market; they can't simply start blocking access.

The EU is not a single block in all regulations and besides the UK is not even part of it anymore.
You can see that with bookies, take for example Betfair, restricted in France Belgium and Portugal but available in the rest of Europe.
Uk's Gambling commission is one of the strictest, they don't mess with things like we're off-shore, we're Curacao incorporated, and they throw fines left and right till you understand it's better not to obey or pack your bags and go.

So, the choice is usually in the game provider and the casino, if the casino says they have a license the game provider will allow the games, if they say no, they will restrict, depends pretty much on the risk they are willing to take.

Its not just matter of Europe but many providers have implented these blocks since many years, with some I was never able to login from Italy.
It could be right as law? Yes It could be a right idea...
But, at least in Italy, they have such limitations because want collect more fees and taxes from providers.
 

All things happen because of government regulations so every industry and not just gambling must follow the regulations if they want to still running their business. I don't think we can find the real matters because that will related to the casino and the government. If you really want to know the real matters, you can ask to both casino and the government so you can get the right answers.

Even though i'm not from EU, the restriction is probably tied to casinos since i've been experiencing the same thing with a few of them for maybe the past year or so, but all it takes is a switch to another casino to avoid those restrictions.

Maybe it has something to do with KYC because some of my accounts have gone through KYC and in those casinos, I have no problem playing certain games that are blocked in the other casinos.

Might be restricted in some specific casinos instead? Or Stake is just doing something different from other casinos so that's why it's allowed there lol. Still from what I looked up it doesn't look like Pragmatic play isn't allowed for the UK, at least not yet anyway.

From what I looked up it might be because of something like this?
https://news.cision.com/evolution/r/regarding-review-by-uk-gambling-commission%2Cc4085961

Both Evolution and Pragmatic play at the very least hold remote gaming license approved by the UK, so it might just be casinos taking the games and not having the authoritative license to operate them in the UK maybe? I'm not sure how all these licenses work but simply, Rainbet doesn't have the proper license to hold Evolution (and most likely other games as well) games for UK users, or something along those lines. It's just Rainbet that's probably the issue, hence why you can still see them at Stake.

Yes, it is possible that gaming providers are limiting access to their games in Europe due to these regulations as the UKGC has been very strict with regards to gaming companies operating in the country and Evolution Gaming may be facing issues for allowing its games to be accessed by UK punters via unlicensed casinos.

However, it is strange that you can access Evolution Gaming and other providers’ games at a casino like Stake, while you cannot access them at Rainbet, this is certainly due to different access policies and regulations applied by each casino.

It is important to note that gaming regulations are constantly changing and gaming companies need to adapt to them in order to continue operating legitimately. It is possible that gaming providers are working to find solutions to these issues and continue to offer their games to punters in Europe and I do not recommend that you look for unlicensed casinos to avoid these restrictions... it is a risk that is not worth taking.

Unfortunately, I fear that these restrictions will become more severe in the coming years, or perhaps in the coming months... online casinos have grown very quickly, many are causing major problems of severe addiction in local populations, it is plausible that the authorities will act more strictly.

from what I have read it depends on the licensing the casino has, Rainbet might not have the required specific license to allow the games to be played on their casino if you are from a certain region while stake.com might have all the necessary license to allow people from certain regions to play the games on their casino.

I think before you make any conclusion on this you should try another casino first and see if similar games you feel are restricted to Europe is restricted over there. It will be impossible for me to check it out myself if not I would love to do it with the aim of finding the reason for the restriction. Do your research first and share it with us later.

Maybe because of this? https://rue.ee/gambling-regulations-in-europe/

They want every casino want to operate in their country will be regulated or registered to their country. this is somehow great action so that they can control those online gambling platform that will come in their country also they can earn some money from those operators that will operate in their jurisdictions.

If they won't follow on the regulation done by EU then I guess they would really get affected with the recent action done by authorities.

I agree that's surprising Evolution seem to geoblock users from european countries on most casinos but they allow them from few others. Maybe they think those ones are more serious and professional, and they are montioring more closely their customers? Citizens from one unrestricted country should be allowed to access Evolution services when they travel abroad, or because for some reasons (because they are using a network from their company for example) the IP address of their connection belongs to another country.

What about other casinos aside from stake and rainbet? do you see the same region block?

I think there's a chance stake might be different. Although not an EU country but, I once heard pragmatic play games are also available for folks from the Philippines in stake even though they're normally not in other casinos. Correct me if I'm remembering this wrong though lol. But if memory serves right, it's possible stake may be doing something else different, no? 🤔

From my part, as a person who is not resident in the EU and  have seen these restrictions many times before, long time ago where each casino is different even with the very same providers, sometimes even restricted games and slots only. It’s confusing but it all seems to come down to licensing and regional regulations that keeps updating all the time.
For example the known providers like Evolution, Pragmatic, and Hacksaw are very careful about where their games can be accessed if a casino doesn’t have the right licensing for a particular country or region automatically the providers block their games on that platform, so this is probably why you noticed Rainbet has so many restrictions while Stake doesn’t. Stake only to likely have stronger agreements and licenses in place for EU regions.

I think it’s really hit or miss, depending on the casino and the agreements they have set up. It’s annoying to many players but at the end of the day, it’s all about compliance and avoiding risks for the providers, which means if that casino decides to restrict any game or provider, probably for the best and safety of their customers and their funds.

I believe it to be specific to the casino you are going, pretty much I am in Europe right now and access every freaking single provider like Pragmatic, Hacksaw, Play n Go, Massive Studios, Bgaming, Twist Gaming and more and I see no such restrictions, out of the huge list of the slot providers you can find in a casino there are some very specific not so well known providers that may be restricted in Europe. Now there is a massive KYC campaign going on in many countries and most casinos are making it mandatory though there are still no KYC casinos as of yet, plenty of them. I wonder why so many people make such questions like this which is a truly valid question yet no one question the robbery going on by a lot of well known casinos doing through messing with their RTP, apparently most gamblers will continue to suffer from losing all of their money but this is not a problem of mine anymore, I have done enough to warn about such thing lately.