UK Gambling Commission clamps down on affiliates’ use of F2P games
Operators told they must stop affiliates offering free-to-play games without age verification “immediately”
The UK Gambling Commission has written to its remote licensees warning them they are responsible for ensuring affiliates don’t offer free-to-play (F2P) games without age verification.
In a letter sent out on Thursday, the UKGC highlighted the recent changes to the licensing conditions that says operators must conduct age verification before allowing players to gamble, and warns this extends to affiliates and F2P games as well.
“The Commission has been made aware that licensees may be benefiting from affiliate advertising models that offer free-to-play versions of real money games without age verification,” the letter said.
“Licensees should therefore ensure the new LCCP provisions on free-to-play games are applied to gambling affiliates they employ. This may require advertising methods to be amended.”
The UKGC noted the new requirements do not apply to other forms of advertising such as screenshots or videos of games because these don’t allow interaction by the customer.
The requirements also do not apply to B2B suppliers which are offering demo versions of games to sell them to commercial third parties, rather than consumers.
In a blog post, law firm Wiggin said: “It will be interesting to see if marketing affiliates are able to justify the cost of introducing age verification processes which would meet the standards required by the Gambling Commission.”
One source from an operator said it was unlikely affiliates would be willing to incur the cost of age verification checks and would instead just change their advertising models.
The source also highlighted that some B2B providers have increasingly been acting as affiliates themselves, placing them in something of a grey area.
The UKGC letter ends: “You should take steps immediately to ensure that your free-to-play games cannot be accessed by children and young people via affiliate’s websites.
This week the ASA clamped down on four operators, including William Hill and Betfair, for ads placed by an affiliate on a Looney Tunes app.