Gambling Commission Tightens Gaming Machine Rules To Reduce Harm

The Gambling Commission has finalised new technical standards for gaming machines, the devices found across Britain's betting shops, arcades, social clubs and casinos, following its long-running consultation on the 2023 Gambling Act Review White Paper.

Gaming machines generate more than a fifth of the total Gross Gambling Yield reported for the British gambling industry, excluding lotteries, and the regulator said the changes are designed to make participation fairer and safer for consumers while giving operators better tools to spot signs of harm.

What Changes From 2027

From June 30 2027, new category B gaming machines will have to provide players with improved access to gambling management tools, along with session information showing how long they have been playing and how much they have won or lost. 

That same sessional data will also be made available to licensees across the sector, supporting their existing regulatory duty to interact with customers who show signs of gambling harm.

The updated standards also target game design directly. Operators will be required to stop celebrating awards that fall below a player's stake size, a design pattern regulators say can make small losses feel like wins, and to remove features that let a customer speed up how quickly a result is revealed. 

Existing machines on the market are exempt from the new requirements, with the Commission citing the cost and technical complexity of retrofitting older hardware as resulting in benefits it judged would not be proportionate.

Staged Rollout

The rules will not land all at once. A formal definition of a gaming machine "session" comes into force first, on March 30 2027, ahead of the bulk of the remaining changes on June 30 2027, with staff-alert requirements held back separately. 

The Commission said the phasing reflects feedback gathered during the consultation, including concerns about "alert fatigue" among gambling premises staff and the need to protect customer privacy as more session data becomes visible to operators.

The package delivers on a specific commitment made in the government's 2023 Gambling Act Review White Paper, which called for the Commission to review its gaming machine technical standards and examine the case for session limits across category B and C machines alongside other safer-gambling tools built into the machines themselves.

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Where These Machines Sit

Category B machines cover the higher-stakes devices found in bookmakers, adult gaming centres and casinos, split into sub-categories B1 through B4 that set different maximum stakes and prizes, while category C and D machines cover lower-stakes devices typically found in pubs, seaside arcades and family entertainment centres. 

The technical standards reviewed in this update sit alongside the Commission's wider Gambling Act 2005 licence conditions, which already require operators to display responsible gambling messaging on machines and to remove non-compliant units from premises quickly once identified, as well as a separate rule introduced earlier in 2026.