Rival Casinos Blocked from Accepting New US Players
American online casino players’ options continue to dwindle. Over the past few months we have seen some of the major casino groups close their doors, such as English Harbour and Casino Coins; but now comes word that the software provider Rival Gaming has told all licensee’s that they can no longer accept NEW US players. Back on April 19th we reported that many of the Rival Gaming white label partners were no longer accepting new US players; however this latest announcement (although there hasn’t been a public statement as we’ve seen with many of these departures) comes from Rival itself.
Online casinos that have used Rival Gaming and accept new US players have a big decision to make; do they accept the fact that attracting new US casino players will no longer be a part of their marketing strategy, or do they find a new software provider. Switching software providers is not a simple task and without going into the technical details of it all the integration period is usually a few months. But for those online casinos whose business survives based on US players, we suspect that they will make a push for a quick integration to ensure that it’s business as usual.
One such company that will be moving software providers from Rival Gaming to TopGame is ThoughtsLinks LTd (as known by their affiliate program, AffiliateWide) and even better known for the three online casinos they operate: box24casino.com, blackdiamondcasino.net, spartanslots.com. They announced to their business partners on August 3rd that they “received notification from our software provider, Rival that as from 7th August we will no longer be able to accept New US player registrations…In light of this decision we are changing our software provider to the TopGame so we can continue to promote our product to the US. The process will involve migrating existing players and affiliates for our 3 brands with an expected completion date of the 15th August 2011.”
Is has not been made clear as to whether existing US players will be forced over to TopGame Software or if they will be running different casino platforms based on when you open your account. On the website box24casino.com it still lists Rival as the software provider and at the time of publication we had not heard back from Rival customer service to clarify the situation. Rival Software was very well known for their iSlots series of slot games where a story unfolded as you played; those will definitely be missed by players. We have yet to review the TopGame Software, however in light of the fact that they are picking up some bigger US brands they will be next on our list to review, so stay tuned for that.
We expect that the dust hasn’t settled in the US market place and more casinos or software providers will change their stance on US players. The options for US players when choosing an online casino continue to dwindle. With many of the big names and trusted online casinos leaving the US market it becomes even more imperative to be careful when selecting a new casino. There are still good online casinos for US players, however there are definitely some bad ones that you need to avoid.
