Play’n GO Casinos
Although the world of online video slots appears, at least to the untrained eye, to be massively diverse, with lots of colour and difference and variety, as you zoom in, or perhaps more accurately, zoom out, you start to see a few giant shapes emerging.
Play’n GO is one of those giants, a Swedish software provider, game developer, now calling itself “the leading mobile casino gaming developer”.
The company is huge, with offices in several countries around the world. It provides not just games – in the slot, table game, video poker, scratch card, video bingo, fixed odds areas, as well as some hard to categorise ones – but also “platform” software.
Platform software is the nuts and bolts of a casino. You won’t find a “Play’n GO” casino, but you can play at dozens of sites that use the software. To go with the around 150 games the company has currently on the market, you’ll find approaching 300 casinos using their software, including really big names like Casumo, Guts Casino, Betsafe Casino, and BetVictor Casino.
It’s impossible for a static review – this report was written in January 2019 – to keep completely up to date on a company like Play’n GO because they do so much and move so quickly.
If you decide you’re a firm fan of Play’n GO and want to check out their new casinos and new games, then you need to keep an eye on industry news sites like this, or follow Play’n GO yourself, their website news page is filled with news, including regular award announcements.
This is obviously an online casino software company that is doing something right. Interestingly, if you’re a real fan, a lot of the company’s website is devoted to recruiting new staff. You never know, you might end up designing your own games!
But should you sign up and check out some of the best Play’n GO Casino sites?
Play’n GO Slots
There are 148 games listed under the Play’n GO tab at the most reliable slot listing site that we know.
They remain popular in the UK market, with lots of games being chosen – how much by the site, and how much on the grounds that a site is running Play’n GO slots software we couldn’t possibly say – to star in casino lobbies, as the front pages or opening screens of online casino sites are called.
The most popular of these games, according to our listings site, are Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead (an Egyptology themed game), Raging Rex (dinosaurs), Rise of Olympus (Ancient Greece), Gunslinger (Western), and Legacy of Egypt (guess what!?).
It’d be silly to try to provide an overview of this big a menu of games.
But we’re silly.
Play’n GO slots have a particular visual look, with cartoony graphics a common theme, and squared-off reels. They tend to have a lot of bonus games, and those bonus games can be quite deep and involved – that’s very much true of Book of Dead. The promotional graphics that come with some of the games tend to follow a recent industry trend of using lots of female flesh to sell their games. We can only assume that it works, and who are we to judge?
Play’n GO are like any other big developer. They will tend to be a little less innovative than smaller studios, picking up ideas that have proven to work. There’s also a recent trend in the industry of partnering with smaller studios to pick up the best games and give them to a wider audience with the clout that a company like Play’n GO can provide. Again, who are we to judge.
But don’t judge the whole range of Play’n GO slots by this brief summary. Your best bet is to go and find a site, sign-up, log-in and start playing – ideally with some bonus money, or on demo mode. The majority of Play’n GO slots have RTPs of around 96%.
Play’n GO Casino Cames
If you’re one of those for whom the longevity and lineage of a green-baize game, then Play’n GO are happy to help you out there too.
You’ll find a good selection of games on offer on their site, and you should expect to see at least some of these titles at all Play’n GO casino sites.
You can play baccarat (mini), blackjack (single deck), roulette (French), blackjack double exposure, Deuces Wild, Casino Hold’em, standard black, casino stud poker, beat me, money wheel (a wheel of fortune game), super wheel (the same), English roulette, standard black jack, Pai Gow poker and European roulette pro.
Some of these games have extremely good RTPs, with figures above (just above, but above) 99%.
Play’n GO other casino games
The rest of Play’n GO games are likely to be less appealing to most players. That’s no criticism, it’s just that most players don’t dig video poker and scratch cards as much as other games – look at any casino site and see where they’re presented.
There are relatively few of these on offer from Play’n GO, but if you see them we think that you can count on similar levels of quality and innovation that you’ll find in Play’n GO’s more traditional casino slots and table games.
You won’t find Play’n GO live dealer games yet. Their casinos though feature Evolution Gaming games, as well as NETENTs who are two of the biggest and best providers of live streaming games.
The History of Play’n GO Casino Software
It’s not that easy to find the history of Play’n GO, who, unlike many companies, don’t seem keen on having a big About page on their website. Fair enough!
At LinkedIn – where they’re also busy recruiting – they do tell something of their story.
The company was founded in the mid-90s, reportedly in 1997, by a group of “geeks” who worked as consultants for some big casino companies. They got to talking and decided to get together, in order to go it alone – if you follow.
These guys were working with some of the best companies, but they reckoned they could do better themselves.
They have a nice mission statement sentence in their biography that they should really put on a poster: “Our goal is simply to delight others and inspire them to have fun.”
They boast about their work environment. The company also has impressive social responsibility policies.
Technology is at the heart of what the company does, though. This is obvious when you see their “trade” website.
Play’n GO says it was the first company to make mobile games. This is now the bulk of the industry, so they can certainly be credited with being ahead of the game there. They are also doing something that we think players will all love: “complexity and technical problems can threaten a player’s enjoyment of an online game.”
If acknowledging that leads to the “failsafe games that our clients can take pride in and their game players can enjoy without hassle,” then no-one will be complaining.
Are Play’n GO Casinos safe to use?
Every player should prioritise their safety first and foremost. It’s important to remember that the Internet shouldn’t be seen as a crook infested hell-hole, full of people who are out to steal your cash, data, and identity!
It’s also important to remember, that the best way to stay safe online is probably to consider the internet as a crook-infested hell-hole, full of people who are out to steal your identity, data, and cash.
Both of those things are true. Whatever you do, and wherever you play, make sure you’re doing so with the best security possible. The last thing you want to have hacked is a casino account – make sure your antivirus protection is up to date, and that you use the best password protocols.
When handing over money, you should be especially careful, and the casino world is particularly vulnerable to scamming because gambling consistently attracts people who are vulnerable to being scammed – that is, people who are really desperate to get their hands on money quickly.
Alongside good internet security, you should also check yourself against safe gambling practices.
When you see Play’n GO games at other sites, you should ensure that those sites have full licensing, and good policies on data protection, privacy, safe gambling, user support and so on. And do all that well before you hand over your e-wallet details.
The same is true at sites that run on the Play’n GO software – in so far as you’re even aware of this, and many players are not – you must always be sure that the actual site you are using is safe and legal for you to use.
What we see at Play’n GO looks great though.
Sitting where they usually do, at the bottom of the front page are the following logos:
Alderney Gambling Control Commission, the Gaming Commission of Belgium, the Malta Gaming Authority, the Romanian gaming authorities’ logo, the UK Gambling Commission, bmm testlabs, the GLI, and IBAS UK.
Let’s go through those.
Alderney – like many popular gambling jurisdictions – is an off-shore territory (with low taxes) that is governed by the UK.
The Belgian gaming authority lists its licensed casinos rather than the operators.
The Malta Gaming authority – one of the most respected in the industry – has licensed Play’n GO Malta Limited with a critical supply license that covers the company’s business-to-business services. There’s also a gaming services licence.
The Romanian authorities have also licensed Play’n GO for the supply for gaming software.
The big one for UK players is the UK Gambling Commission, which has an active licence for Digital Fish AB – the name of the company in Vaxjo, Sweden, that owns the Play’n GO name. There are no sanctions or notes on the licence – completely clean licenses aren’t the given that you might think.
The other logos on the front page help us to answer another question:
Are Play’n GO casinos fair?
In order to win a licence, casino sites are required to show that they operate games fairly, according to the rules of the jurisdiction which the licence covers.
That makes the additional testing and auditing promotions on the Play’n GO site an additional safeguard.
Bmm testlabs is the “longest established and most experienced private independent gaming testing lab in the world”. The company has been working in the industry for 35 years. These labs test games to make sure they operate as they’re supposed to. As well as meaning that the games are “fair” for the player – that is, that they deliver a properly random sequence of events, for example – and that they deliver a profit to the owner. Bmm’s latest news includes their award of the Best Lab in Romania award at the 2018 Casino Life and Business Magazine awards ceremony.
We’ll take that as a good sign!
GLI is another testing lab, which tests games against the standards set by regulators. They too give their blessing to Play’n GO.
Next up in IBAS (the Independent Betting Adjudication Service), an additional safeguard for players that offers an independent dispute resolution service. This ombudsman-like service is yet another good sign. We recommend players take a look at the free advice guides that are available on IBAS’ website, and that include some excellent information, and consider the sight of the IBAS logo on a website as a good sign.
Using Play’n GO Casino Software
Play’n GO supply games to casinos, but they also provide the stuff that makes those reels go around for players – the bits that set up the games, showcase, deal with player accounts, collect money, send out emails… all that sort of stuff.
A lot of this is largely irrelevant to players: the only thing most players are going to worry about is that they get a good experience when they log on to a site. No doubt, winning shed-loads of cash will help them feel good about even a badly run site!
So, it’s good news that Play’n GO put stability at the heart of their publicity about their platform software. Nobody wants to see a game crash when they’re on a winning streak after all.
Much of the material is aimed only at producers, but it’s interesting for players to take a look behind the curtain.
So, something like “One player account for all channels and verticals”, should mean that you get a more streamlined experience from the site. And “access to all GAT supported game providers,” is great for players.
Game providers listed by Play’n GO are Play’n GO (of course!), NetEnt, Microgaming, NYX, Evolution Gaming, Spigo, Quickspin, Yggdrasil, Microgaming Poker, XPG, GamesOS, and Tain.
Wow! There are some favourite names there, and those names can supply enough slots, casino games, and live dealer games to keep you playing for days.
And that’s the idea. And you should be aware of that.
When Play’n GO promises its customers, a “complete view of player data and activities,” that’s your behaviour they’re talking about. And they want to know what you’re doing in order that they can get you to do more of it.
The fact of online gambling that some gamblers seem most resistant to is that, in the long run, they’re the casino site’s profit.
That is why the best way to look at gambling is as entertainment, and to accept that you will pay for entertainment. None of this is to suggest that games are rigged, or that any player – literally anyone of you – might not click on the spin that delivers millions of pounds with your very next bet. But you should be aware that that is very very very unlikely to happen, and that your gambling experience is most likely to reflect the theoretical return to player (RTP) values on games that will see you down around 3 – 5% on most slots in the long run – that, the house edge, is the casino’s profit, as it has been since someone worked out how many numbers to put on a roulette wheel to make a profit, and then decided to add an extra zero for good luck.
So, a good experience for you is a way to make you spend longer at a site, so you should keep your safe gambling rules in mind, no matter how slick – and perhaps especially if it is very slick – a site is.
Play’n GO payment methods
Play’n GO offers you plenty of ways to give your money to their sites.
They offer processing data from Devcode, Kalixa, and Entercash, which covers most payment methods. You can use the following cards via the company’s card providers: Dankort, VISA, MasterCard, Bank Axept, Discover, Diners Club, AMEX, Maestro, JBC, Dicover, Switch, Solo, and VISA Electron. There is direct bank integration with Danske Bank, which doesn’t mean much to most UK players.
The latest of Play’n GO Casino News
There probably isn’t an industry that moves more quickly than the online casino world – with the possible exception of the greased downhill stoat skiing industry, which is, with the best will in the world, niche.
Play’n GO is no exception to this high-speed world, and the news they’ve shared is a good indication of the breadth of their operation – and it’s success (yes, we know they write these stories in order to generate a belief in their success, but these are genuine stories, there’s no fake news here).
Most recent is the awarding of the People’s Choice Award from AskGamblers – the badly-written review site! – at their annual awards. Literary bitching aside, that’s a genuine popular vote for the developers, and you can expect to see Legacy of Egypt doing even better as a result.
The company then celebrates the January 2019 launch of Raging Rex, a very sophisticated slot game with 4,096 pay-lines with a dinosaur theme and some lovely graphics.
The company is planning its trip to the ICE conference in London, one of the biggest gatherings of software providers in the international online casino market.
On December 19th, 2018, Play’n GO were launching games again with their very modern take on the classic fruit machine, Star Joker! We’ve reviewed this game, and its super-trad 10 pay lines don’t limit its appeal or its beauty at all. A great bit of retro-futurism from Play’n GO.
Just a week before that a very different game, Battle Royal, is one of the most deeply themed games we’ve ever seen, telling the story of Henry VIII and his six wives across five reels and shed-loads of bonus games.
At the start of December 2018, Play’n GO were celebrating wins at the SBC Awards with the Game Developer of the Year award. Not bad!
And finally, on December 3rd, 2018, the company was adding another casino brand – Royal Panda – to its portfolio of partners.
The Final Words
Everyone loves Play’n GO! That’s the impression that the company gives, at least.
It’s not just unjustified boasting either. Those awards – particularly the people’s choice one – are real enough, and we think that they’re deserved.
And new releases keep coming from Play’n GO, slot after slot after slot is pouring out of the Swedish games mines, showing real variety and imagination in their design.
We’re happy to recommend Play’n GO casino software. We’ve warned you about being on your game when it comes to safe gambling because these sites are really slick, well designed and they do actually work fantastically well, with loads of payment methods, good user experience, and genuine depth to the user’s interaction with the site in most cases.
Play’n GO goes beyond licensing to add the best game testing in the world so you can be sure that every Play’n GO game and casino is legal and safe to play at.
The only problem with Play’n GO? You’re more likely to Play’n Stay and stay and stay!
