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Elliott Resnick at First Look Games, says that studios must ensure that affiliates are publishing accurate information about their games if they are to maximise the marketing opportunity they present

Slot studios have come to realise the importance of game promotion, both in terms of driving awareness of their brands and titles among players as well as getting their name and content in front of the casino managers that ultimately decide whether to stock their slots or not.

But promoting games to players and operators is not without its challenges. Studios need to identify which affiliates to work with, and then also ensure that all content published about their titles is accurate and correct. There are also compliance issues to contend with.

Affiliates are a powerful marketing channel for studios, so long as the information they publish about their games is right. It’s very common to see an affiliate confuse the aggregator with the studio, with SOFTSWISS being credited as the developer instead of Stakelogic, for example.

Another area of concern is incorrect game stats being published for the reels, rows, volatility and RTP. This may seem like a small issue, but if a player is expecting a highly volatile video slot with a decent RTP based on the affiliate’s review, but finds a low-volatility classic with a low payout, they will be disappointed.

Ultimately, this can damage the reputation of the studio – as well as the affiliate – and mean the player simply stays clear of the developer’s games in the future. Given the hundreds of slots that launch each month, it’s not like they are starved of choice.

So how is this situation coming about?

The asset pack and game sheet should be the only place that affiliates take information about a slot, but in most cases, they are not given access to these documents. This means they try and pull information from other sources – casinos, other affiliate reviews, etc.

In the event they are able to access an asset pack or game sheet, they will often find the size of the file is too big to receive over email and the information it contains has been hastily thrown together – the person responsible for doing so often overrun with other tasks that take priority.

Of greater concern is that within these asset packs, there are often links to the studio’s demo game server which affiliates can embed in their sites so that players can try and few spins on the slot before heading to the casino and playing for real money.

The issue here is that if the affiliate is active in a market such as the UK, it’s a regulatory requirement that the demo link sits on top of a fully-fledged player identification system. If it doesn’t, the studio is non-compliant and can and will feel the wrath of the regulator.

While there has yet to be a fine issued against a studio, we have been made aware of several developers that have received a warning letter from the regulator about their demo games not being age-gated so it’s only a matter of time before someone is hit where it hurts – their cash reserves.

This could be end-game for a smaller studio which simply would not have the financial resilience to ride out a million-pound regulatory fine and come out the other side. And that’s before knock-on effects such as operators not wanting to work with them any more are taken into account.

So what’s the solution?

Studios need to ensure their asset packs and game sheets are given the attention they deserve. They should be put together in a way that file sizes are sensible and that all of the information contained within the pack is correct.

Then it comes down to how these asset packs are delivered to affiliates.

Emails and WeTransfer are not optimal and that’s where First Look Games comes in. Studios can upload their asset packs to a dedicated library where they can be downloaded by more than 900 approved affiliates with a combined global audience of 20+ million players.

Studios can then take advantage of our accuracy tracker which pulls information back from the content written and published by our approved affiliate partners and identifies any incorrect information. An email containing the correct stats is then set to the affiliate.

The biggest concern is of course the age-gating of demo games. We provide that via our partnership with 1account, allowing studios to verify a player’s identity quickly and easily before they can access the demo – this can be done when the player clicks to launch the demo from an affiliate site.

The issue that most studios face when it comes to affiliates is the heavy lifting involved and this is why most just work with a handful of publishers. But with First Look Games, we have streamlined the entire process and provide direct access to a huge global network of approved affiliates.

This allows any studio to take game promotion to the next level in a way that ensures any and all information published about their games is accurate and, most importantly, compliant.

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