Online Casino Gambling Controversies in 2005 - 12-28-05

December 28 - The online casino industry is never free of controversy, and 2005 has been no exception. There were a number of much talked about incidents, with online poker giant Party Gaming dropping Empire Online like a hot potato probably the most controversial...

The kick off to the year was fairly quiet, until a number of incidents involving Gambling Federation casino was reported. In short, Gambling Federation was accused by a number of watchdogs of pulling a fast one by apparently including a form of malware in their online casino download. The worm would return a "not found" message in the user's browser when they entered the URL's of certain competitors. This incident caused a big hooh hah with the Gambling Federation rep stepping won from the Interactive Gaming Council. The company defended their "worm" by stating that they were protecting their customers from domains causing them grief". I still can't help but chuckle when I read this. Gambling Federation is still going strong but it remains to be seen if they will well and truly recover from this.

Casinova Software drew quite a bit of discussion in their in online gambling circles. This after they launched a casino called "Trump Casino", clearly trying to con people into thinking the great Donald Trump was involved. Marketing genius, or con job? You be the judge.

The next was that behemoth, Party Gaming. After rejecting an offer from Empire Online *a skin of Party Poker), the suddenly announced that they are launching a new network and their skins would no longer be part of the network. Needless to say, they then went back and tried to buy Empire  at a much lower price. The two almost ended in court, and this saga is sure to drag on into the new year. Again, you be the judge. Dubious or clever tactics or both from Party Gaming?

Then the one that really got the Gambling Webmaster community fuming. A number of big online casino gambling group suddenly announced blanket changes to their terms and conditions. In short, they came out and said that they are paying less for referrals of customers. The two leading the pack were Referback (Belle Rock Gaming) and Fortune Affiliates. After a lot of pressure from the community they dropped the idea, but not after a couple of months of total ignorance and one of the biggest PR disasters I have seen in all my years in this game.

There were many other incidents, but these are the ones that seemed to spark the most debate. If 2005 is anything to go by, 2006 is sure to be a cracker and,  as usual, we will be the first to inform you!

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