Ontario’s gambling regulator has handed down another fine to an iGaming licensee, this time penalizing Booming Games for allegedly allowing a prohibited auto-play functionality.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) said on Thursday, Aug. 20, that it ordered $70,000 in monetary penalties against the gaming supplier after finding that the banned auto-play feature was available to Ontario players for several months on multiple slot games hosted on a licensed operator’s platform.
The AGCO said that its compliance investigation found that Booming Games failed to properly configure, test, and monitor certain games before and after it launched as a licensed supplier in Ontario, as is every registered gaming supplier’s responsibility. The AGCO notified the impacted operator and the auto-play functionality was disabled.
Booming Games has the right to appeal to the provincial Licence Appeal Tribunal within 15 days. Canadian Gaming Business reached out to Booming Games seeking a comment and more information, but had not heard back as of the time of writing.
Booming Games has supplied games to some online casino operators in Ontario since receiving a license from the AGCO in early 2024. It offers titles like Buffalo Hold and Win, Cash Pigs, and The Wild Wings of Phoenix to licensed operators in the market.
Globally, Booming Games works with operator partners including Ontario-licensed brands like Bally’s, Betano, Casino Days, LeoVegas, and more.
The AGCO did not name the operator involved in the auto-play violation.
Why does Ontario ban auto-play features?
The regulator charges Booming Games with two violations of its iGaming standards:
- Offering games that include auto-play features for slots
- Failing to perform sufficient monitoring and testing, with the result that the gaming system and/or gaming supplies were not demonstrated to be operating as approved
Auto-play functionality allows a player to play several rounds on an online slot machine without actually manually initiating each separate spin. The AGCO’s regulations ban that feature outright, as well as imposing other restrictions such as a minimum time requirement between spins.
The regulator said that the prohibition on auto-play is in place to ensure that players have an opportunity to pause and assess their play and whether they want to continue gambling, in an attempt to reduce the potential for excessive intensity, speed, and continuity of play and to support informed player decision-making within online games.
“Requiring players to manually start each spin creates a deliberate pause between wagers,” added the regulator in a press release. “This pause can help maintain player awareness and control, reduce prolonged and uninterrupted play, and reduce the risk of gambling-related harm.”
There are some concessions; online slots in Ontario can implement auto-play during bonus rounds when no additional money is being wagered.
AGCO hold suppliers and operators to account
Booming Games is the second iGaming registrant to be punished by the AGCO in the space of two weeks.
On Aug. 6, the regulator fined Betty Casino a total of $120,000 after finding that age-verification and player controls failures allowed users under the province’s legal gambling age of 19 to sign up and in some cases gamble on the slots-focused online casino site. A total of 23 underage people were able to create accounts with Betty and nine of them went on to place bets, said the AGCO.
A Betty spokesperson confirmed to Canadian Gaming Business that it identified and reported a “vulnerability” in its age-verification process, immediately closed the accounts in question, implemented additional safeguards, and accepted the fine.
The AGCO has handed down various other punishments in the last 12 months, including:
- Fining theScore Bet $105,000 in October 2025 for a failure to address a user’s high-risk gambling despite “clear red flags”.
- Fining FanDuel a record $350,000 in January 2026 for not appropriately identifying or reporting unusual and suspicious betting and match-fixing activity involving Czech table tennis.
- Issuing a five-day suspension to PointsBet Canada in February after the operator allegedly failed to identify and adequately report suspicious betting on now-banned NBA player Jontay Porter. PointsBet appealed that temporary suspension to the tribunal and a hearing is scheduled for October.
- Fining iGaming suppliers Relax Gaming and Arrise Solutions $40,000 each in May after finding that some of the companies’ respective content was offered on some unlicensed iGaming websites.
