DraftKings fined after online slot machine has no winners for a week

DraftKings and White Hat Gaming have been fined over $22,000 after an incident last summer involving 522 online casino players. What happened to those players may have seemed like a case of bad luck at first, but had nothing to do with the laws of probability. It was a problem with the slot machine.

According to a report from Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection’s Gaming Division recently provided to the outlet CT Insider , from Aug. 15-21, 2023, players wagered over $24,000 on Deal or No Deal’s Banker Bonanza with more than 20,000 spins and produced zero wins.

However, the game advertised the average payout to be nearly 95 cents for every dollar wagered.

"Effectively, it was impossible for any Connecticut patron to achieve a win on the game for a period of 7 days, while live on the gaming platform," the report said.

A state investigation found a file in the game’s software had not been loaded properly, leading it to be impossible for a player to win any amount of money.

The lack of winnings did not go unnoticed by players, and one reached out to DraftKings on Aug. 20, 2023.

“I believe this is a problem as I have never played a slot game where I haven’t won a single cent in over 100 spins," the player said.

“I understand it can be frustrating to have a bit of a cold streak, but I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with the game itself," a DraftKings representative replied.

According to the investigation , when DraftKings sent that reply it was already aware of other complaints and White Hat Gaming already had identified a glitch in the game.

The game was relaunched on Aug. 22, 2023. According to the report, a week later, all users were refunded for their play during the affected week without DraftKings giving the players an explanation.

The investigation found neither DraftKings nor White Hat notified the DCP of what was happening until Aug. 31, 2023, after the issue was fixed and regulators had reached out over player complaints.

In Jan. 2024, White Hat agreed to pay a $3,500 in fines and, in April, DraftKings paid a $19,000 fine over the companies violating state regulations and failing to comply with reporting obligations.

Both companies released statements to CNBC this week in response to the details of last year’s incident being released.

"The issue in Connecticut arose from an error on the game developer’s side," DraftKings said. "We identified a possible issue within 48 hours of launch and immediately escalated it for investigation."

"All impacted customers were fully refunded within days of concluding there was an issue, and we have not encountered any similar issues with this vendor," DraftKings continued.

"Regarding the technical fault concerning one of our games live with DraftKings in Connecticut in 2023 , we took immediate action as soon as we became aware of the situation," White Hat said. "It was a one-off incident and all affected players were fully refunded by DraftKings."

A spokesperson for the Department of Consumer Protection told CNBC that this incident is “a great example of something that, if we were not there to intervene, may not have been taken seriously until our investigators got involved.”

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