Ontario Hits Slot Supplier with $70K Fine After Banned Feature Ran Live for Months

Key Points

• The AGCO issued Booming Games (Malta) a CA$70,000 fine on 20 August 2026 for deploying a prohibited auto-play function in several slots in Ontario, which went on for several months before being discovered by the regulator.
• There were violations of two distinct standards – requirement 2 of standard 2.16 (prohibition of auto-play) and requirement 3 of standard 4.09 (obligation for monitoring and testing).
• This is in line with the increased regulatory enforcement seen in Ontario in 2026, after the CA$120,000 fine imposed against Betty Gaming in early August and the CA$350,000 fine against FanDuel in January.

Ontario Hits Slot Supplier with $70K Fine After Banned Feature Ran Live for Months

A feature banned in Ontario since before the regulated market even opened quietly ran inside several slot games supplied by Booming Games (Malta) Limited, and it stayed live for months before anyone at the company noticed. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario noticed first.

The AGCO imposed CA$70,000 in fines against the Malta-based slot manufacturer on 20 August 2026 after the regulator detected through its proactive compliance efforts the auto-play feature at work in several Booming Games slots accessible to Ontario residents. There was no self-reporting by the company.

Auto-play is an option for the machine to play continuous spins without any player input. Auto-play was banned in Ontario in July 2021, almost 10 months before the private operators were allowed to enter the Ontario market in April 2022. It was not just some technical information hidden in appendices; it was one of the main principles of the AGCO game design framework from the very beginning.

The Two Failures That Produced One Fine

The AGCO’s investigation did not stop at identifying a prohibited feature. What came out of the probe was a picture of two distinct compliance failures happening at the same time.

The first was straightforward: Booming Games supplied slot games carrying active auto-play functionality, directly contravening Requirement 2 of Standard 2.16 of the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming. The second was more telling: the supplier had also failed to perform ongoing monitoring and testing of its gaming systems after they launched in Ontario, breaching Requirement 3 of Standard 4.09. Both violations were issued under the authority of the Gaming Control Act, 1992.

That second breach matters more than it might seem. Standard 4.09 does not just ask a supplier to get its games certified before launch; it requires ongoing demonstration that those games continue to operate as approved throughout their lifecycle. Booming Games did not just ship a non-compliant product; it had no functioning process to catch the problem after the fact. The pre-launch configuration failure and the post-launch monitoring failure built on each other, which is precisely why the AGCO treated this as a serious breach rather than an isolated error.

Dr Karin Schnarr, CEO and Registrar of the AGCO, was direct in the official announcement: “Ontario’s game design standards are fundamental player-protection measures built into the regulated iGaming market, they are not optional technical requirements. Registered suppliers must have effective controls in place to prevent prohibited features from reaching Ontario players. When those safeguards are not respected, the AGCO will take regulatory action.”

Why Ontario Treats Auto-Play as a Harm Issue, Not a Design Preference?

Auto-play removal is not a styling choice buried in a technical rulebook. The AGCO’s rationale is specific: every time a player manually presses spin, they are making an active decision. That small act creates a pause, a moment to register the last result, reassess spending, and choose whether to continue. Auto-play removes every one of those moments, turning an active decision into a passive one that repeats indefinitely.

Ontario’s game design framework, which the province began building in 2021, goes considerably further than just banning auto-play. The time between each spin must be at least 2.5 seconds. Features that would allow gambling operators to disguise losses for players as wins, such as celebratory animations for players who win an amount lower than their initial investment, are not permitted. Split screen slots are also prohibited. Position net must be shown in Canadian dollars at all times, not abstract credits.

The idea underlying all of these regulations is one and the same – measures intended to protect the interests of gamblers should be structural, embedded in the nature of the game and not depend on the willpower or decision-making of players. The Booming Games case proves this point quite effectively.

Booming Games Is Not the Only Target; the AGCO Has Been Escalating All Year

The CA$70,000 penalty against Booming Games did not land in a vacuum. Ontario’s regulator has been accelerating its enforcement activity throughout 2026, and the targets have been getting bigger.

In January 2026, the AGCO imposed a CA$350,000 penalty on FanDuel Canada for failing to identify and report suspicious betting activity on Czech Table Tennis Star Series matches, accepting 144 bets from three accounts despite multiple indicators of match-fixing. Then, on 6 August 2026, the AGCO ordered CA$120,000 in penalties against Betty Gaming after age-verification failures allowed 23 underage individuals to create accounts on Betty.ca, with nine of them depositing funds and gambling. Booming Games followed less than two weeks later.

What separates the Booming Games case from those two is where the liability sits. The FanDuel and Betty Gaming penalties fell on operators. This one falls on the supplier. That distinction carries weight for the wider industry: the AGCO has now made clear it will not limit its enforcement to the casino brand a player sees on screen. It will go directly to the technology company whose product enabled the breach.

A relevant precedent sits in the AGCO’s own history. The regulator imposed a total penalty of CA$70,000 on the companies in question, namely Bunchberry Limited, Mobile Incorporated Limited, and LeoVegas Gaming PLC, in April 2023 because the slot games being offered by these businesses were not certified by a third-party laboratory. That case identified operator-side gaps. The Booming Games case identifies a supplier-side gap in exactly the same Standards framework, and the AGCO reached the same total penalty figure against a single company.

Ontario’s Market Size Is Exactly What Makes This Enforcement Credible

It is no wonder why suppliers pay serious attention to compliance in Ontario. For example, from April 2024 until March 2025, Ontario earned CA$3.20 billion in gross gambling revenues, up 32% year-over-year, with total bets made amounting to CA$82.7 billion. About 84% of gamblers selected regulated websites. In June 2026, gross gaming revenue on a monthly basis was at CA$400.6 million for 1.32 million active accounts.

A supplier removed from that market, or repeatedly penalised within it, loses access to a commercially significant position. Regulatory pressure and commercial incentive are pulling in exactly the same direction in Ontario, which is what gives enforcement actions like this one real weight beyond the headline figure.

Booming Games has 15 days from the date of the penalty notice to request a hearing before the Licence Appeal Tribunal, an independent adjudicative body within Tribunals Ontario and separate from the AGCO.

Expert Analysis: What This Fine Actually Means for Suppliers?

For years, regulatory enforcement in Ontario targeted operators. The Booming Games case puts the technology supplier directly in the frame. The AGCO has shown it will trace a compliance failure past the casino brand and straight to the company whose product created it.

Standard 4.09’s monitoring obligation is the critical detail. Getting a game certified before launch covers only part of the requirement. Suppliers must maintain ongoing proof that their products continue to operate as approved inside each specific market they serve. A configuration compliant in Malta is not automatically compliant in Ontario; the rules here are market-specific and require continued, structured verification.

Any supplier operating in Ontario without a formal post-launch monitoring process for market-specific configurations is carrying measurable risk right now. The Booming Games fine is not a warning. The AGCO already issued those. This is the consequence.