The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has been prolific with its reprimanding of casino operators recently, and ProgressPlay Ltd has become the latest name to have fallen foul of the Agency.
What happened?
The complaint revolves around m88.com, where, on January 25th (2018) three fairy and fairytale themed games were being promoted, Fairytale Legends: Red Riding Hood, Fairytale Legends: Hansel & Gretel, and Fairies Forest.Fairer Gambling challenged the promotion, questioning whether the games selected were, advertently or otherwise, likely to be of particular appeal to the young.In response to the complaint, ProgressPlay stated that the games are available in demo mode, but players must log into their accounts before playing them, they also removed all images of fairies while awaiting the ruling from the ASA.ProgressPlay added that these games were all provided by third-party software developers, and as such, were available at numerous other sites as well.
The response
After assessment from the ASA, the complaint was upheld by the agency, and a ruling was made that means the games mentioned above can no longer be made available in demo mode at the m88.com site.Additionally, ASA upheld the reasoning that, as fairytales are aimed primarily at children, games based on them are likely to appeal more to the younger demographic, something that the ASA, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) and many other regulators and organisations have spoke out against in recent months.The result of this ruling is that on top of no demos being allowed for the fairy themed games, the adverts can’t appear in their original form again.Fans of these games need not concern, as they are still able to play at a huge number of online casino sites, although it is probable that those operators will be careful how they promote those games going forwards.