AGCO Fines Booming Games Over Banned Auto-Play Feature
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) has ordered C$70,000 in monetary penalties against Booming Games (Malta) Limited after prohibited auto-play functionality was made available to Ontario players on multiple slot games for several months.
Auto-play lets a player automatically spin an online slot without manually initiating each wager.
Ontario prohibits the feature because removing the need to actively start each spin can reduce opportunities for players to pause, assess their play and decide whether to keep gambling, a standard the AGCO applies to protect players throughout their time on a platform.
What The AGCO Found
The regulator's investigation, launched through its own proactive and targeted compliance efforts, found Booming Games failed to properly configure, test and monitor certain games before and after they launched in the Ontario market, in breach of the Registrar's Standards for Internet Gaming covering both auto-play restrictions and ongoing system monitoring.
As a registered gaming supplier, the AGCO said Booming Games is responsible for ensuring its games comply with Ontario's standards before they are made available to operators and players in the province.
Once the AGCO identified the issue, it notified the affected operator and the auto-play functionality on the impacted games was disabled. The regulator did not name the licensed operator whose platform carried the affected Booming Games titles.
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Booming Games' Business
Booming Games is a Malta-licensed slot content studio that supplies games to online casino operators across multiple regulated markets, including Ontario's iGaming framework, which requires suppliers to certify player-protection features like auto-play restrictions before games go live.
The AGCO's Standards for Internet Gaming require registered suppliers like Booming Games to monitor and test their gaming systems and supplies throughout the life of the product, not just at initial launch, meaning a compliance failure identified months after a game goes live can still trigger a formal penalty against the supplier.
The penalty adds to a run of AGCO enforcement actions against igaming suppliers over player-protection compliance in Ontario's regulated market, one of the few North American jurisdictions with explicit rules restricting auto-play functionality on slot content.
The AGCO did not disclose how long the auto-play issue went undetected before its compliance team identified it, though the regulator's own description of the breach spanning “several months” indicates the feature was live on Ontario-facing games for a sustained period before enforcement.
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