Changes Afoot for UK Slots

Throughout the past year many different forms of gambling have come under pressure for change – the most visible has certainly been within bigger gaming as the loot box and microtransaction practice that has become extremely widespread as countries around the world look for ways to not only restrict but also remove the practice given the target audience being much younger – but recently online casinos in particular have come under the microscope as countries like the UK have implemented changes through the past year such as a credit card ban for payments back in April of 2020 to prevent problem players right through to the growing prominence of platforms like Gamstop aimed at reducing participation options too. The latest changes are targeted specifically towards slots however, as the UK gambling regulation are looking to enforce the changes by October of 2021. But what are the proposed changes that could impact UK slots, and many slots sites here?

(Image from bingodaily.co.uk)

• The first change is aimed at online casinos in general as there will be a permanent ban on reverse withdrawals – this method allowed players to re-gamble money that had been requested for withdrawal, which could ultimately lead to bigger losses, and this covers al games and not just the slots.
• Online services will also have to provide a display for total wins and losses during a session, as well as total playtime – this for now is only aimed at slots, but there are suggestions that this could be a blanket change across all games in the future.
• Any sound or imagery that gives the illusion of a win when the return is lower or equal to the stake place is to be removed. 
• Alongside the change to show play time as well as wins and losses, all auto-play features are to be removed to prevent players losing track of time played – another featured slated that could be extended outside of slots.
• Slot spin speed has come into question, with a ban on all slots that spin faster than 2.5 seconds, although no guidelines of minimum or maximum outside of that have been mentioned.
• And finally, all features that speed up play such as turbo options or features that give the illusion of control over outcome, are to be removed.

As mentioned all of these changes for UK slots are to be implemented by October 2021, as such if you’re a regular player you may quickly start to see these features implemented, but also may begin to see them implemented around other games too as the goal has been to provide lower loss percentages and provide better opportunities to the consumer to not only win more but have a more fair experience to boot.