Is Cryptologic the online Russian Mafia?
You have to hand it to the Cryptologic licensees; they operate the casinos while their licensors pocket most of the profits. The licensees provide the real hard work.
The software developers are running their own kind of "casino," trying to extract or cream off as much as they can, hoping nobody will notice.
For those who are not sure how these things work, game developers design the software for the casino sites, using their skills to produce realistic online games.
It requires a degree of sophistication to make software that accurately mimics the cards in a game of blackjack or video poker, or indeed any of the great casino games. Development of good games can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes millions of dollars.
Spending more is no guarantee that the games will be good as shown with Cryptologic and World Gaming (ex Starnet)
The licensees have to pay heavily for the privilege of being "licensed" to use the licensor's software on their casino sites.
Game developers in general have a bad name because what they do cannot in any way be described as being in the interests of players, licensees, or the industry itself.
There are three main groupings to consider: The players, the online casinos, and the software developers.
No one can say that players need to be "regulated" apart from those under 18 or who are compulsive gamblers.
The (recommended) casino operators provide a real service to players but they have no control over payments or payouts.
Those that provided genuine services, we believe, do not need to be regulated. Self-regulation for the (recommended) casino sites and operators is already working.
After some extensive research by this magazine, there is only one conclusion to be reached: Those that need regulating the most are the game developers who have perfected a system of massive scams, right under the noses of players and licensees.
We can understand why Cryptologic's in-house counsel resigned when she uncovered evidence of criminal activities.
Stealing, either from players or licensees, is an everyday occurrence for these companies, and "an honest lawyer" (a very hard term to accept, a kind of oxymoron) would have no alternative but to resign.
IN LAS VEGAS DEVELOPERS WOULD BE FIRED
If these software developers ran the tables in Las Vegas, and the back-end (that is controlled the cash entering and leaving the casino, aside from the fact that no sane person would have given them the job in the first place), they would all be fired within the first few hours of the first day.
There's only one place where thieves, crooks, criminals, and liars deserve to be, and that's out of the way of the rest of us, locked up, behind bars, in jail.
This magazine, while conducting research on behalf of our readers into crooked game developers, has seen indisputable evidence of organized crime, drugs, money laundering, theft from players and licensees, rigged games, credit card frauds, and accounting chicanery.
Our researchers found that the business model adopted by Cryptologic was unfair, unsound, and unsafe, with abusive and illegal clauses that if challenged in court would simply not stand up.
LOOPHOLES & INCONSISTENCIES
One licensee kindly allowed us access to a Cryptologic license agreement. We found loopholes and inconsistencies big enough to drive a Sherman tank through, yet the developers are still in business!
Probably the worst failure by Cryptologic concerned their refusal to supply figures and data to their licensees.
Game developers have a duty to supply all their licensees with accurate figures and data; if not, there is nothing to stop them cooking the books completely, and the Internet provides good cover for this.
Every single detail of every single transaction should be available to the licensees.
If this were the case, the licensees would be able to double check the figures for accuracy and honesty by and for themselves, and provide a "check" on the activities of game developers.
Cryptologic’s system and business model is completely inoperable.
It's bad enough to have strict and abusive license agreements, but when the licensors turn out to be crooks and liars, you're in double trouble.
One example we uncovered is that when a licensee asks for the figures, the request is either ignored or the Russian dope heads demand $ 1,000 a day just to start looking. This sounds like Russian Mafia extortion.
This magazine thoroughly understands why the Cryptologic licensees feel ready to mutiny over their license agreements, and more.
One of them has even begun an $ 800 million lawsuit against Cryptologic. Good luck to him!
The industry doesn't need these criminals, crooks, liars, and thieves.
Let's clear them out now. In the next update, we reveal how an online casino that nobody claims to own is secretly working for Cryptologic. This scam brings in big profits. These are used to boost the figures, to fool the shareholders into thinking that the company is doing well.
Source of this article: http://GamblingMagazine.com and http://CasinoMagazine.com
