Pragmatic Play: slots, live tables and more from Gibraltar
Pragmatic Play makes slots, live-dealer tables and a long tail of other casino games, and rents them to casinos through one connection. It is based in Gibraltar and privately owned.
Who it is
Pragmatic Play's about page says it is led by its chief executive, Julian Jarvis, from its headquarters in Gibraltar, and that it "is owned by a private group of investors led by Veridian (Gibraltar) Limited." It's a private company, so there are no annual reports to read, and the site doesn't give a founding year. I'd rather leave the year out than guess it.
It calls itself a B2B supplier, which means it sells to casinos, not to players. You won't open an account with Pragmatic Play. You'll meet its games inside somebody else's casino, and that casino is the one holding your money.
What it makes
The menu on its site gives the range: slots, live casino, Drops & Wins, jackpots, crash games, arcade and "other RNG". It also offers casinos a player-account platform and promotional tools, and it says all of it is delivered "via a single API", which is the reason one casino can switch on hundreds of its games at once.
The slots are what most players know. Two of its own game pages give the maker's return. Gates of Olympus lists an RTP of 96.50 percent, with symbols that pay anywhere on six tumbling reels and multiplier symbols worth up to 500 times. Sweet Bonanza lists 96.48 percent, with multipliers from 2 to 100 times in the free spins.
Those are the maker's figures. A casino runs its own copy, and the copy is what you're paying for, so I'd open the help screen of the game in front of you and read the return there before the first spin. The RTP guide says why that figure is a price and not a promise, and the slots page covers what the multipliers do to the ride.
The live tables
The live casino page describes a studio with 4K cameras, an HTML5 interface and the game menu in 28 languages. The list of games runs from plain blackjack, baccarat and roulette to Mega Roulette, Money Time and Mega Wheel.
Some of the live games borrow the slot names: there's a Gates of Olympus Roulette and a Sweet Bonanza CandyLand. That's a sensible way to sell a table to slot players, and I'd treat those tables the way I'd treat any roulette with a twist. Count the zeros on the wheel, then find what a straight-up number pays when no multiplier lands on it. If it's less than 35 to 1, that's what pays for the multipliers. The live dealers and roulette pages have the arithmetic.
What it lists as licences and testing
The about page says Pragmatic Play is "certified or licensed in over 30 jurisdictions" but doesn't list them there. It names the testing labs that review its random number generators: Gaming Laboratories International, Quinel and Gaming Associates. The live casino page mentions UK and Malta licences and certifications for, among others, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria.
Britain is the one I checked at the regulator. The Gambling Commission's register shows Pragmatic Play (Gibraltar) Limited, account 56015, with active remote licences for gambling software and for hosting casino, bingo and betting games.
A supplier's licence means it may supply games in that market. It doesn't make the casino offering them to you licensed where you live, and I'd check the casino, not the logo on the game.
Where its games turn up
Of the casinos we have reviewed, Bookie.ag Casino shows Pragmatic Play games among its own. Whether you can play its games for money at all depends on where you live, and so does which casinos are allowed to offer them to you. If the spins are coming faster than you meant them to, the responsible gambling page says where to get help.