The IGT Network, formerly called Entraction before IGT purchased them last year, has added over 20 new countries in its list of blocked countries. The most prominent of these include Australia, Spain, Belgium, and Cyprus. As a result, players from these countries, as well as the rest of the other countries that have been blocked are no longer allowed to play on the IGT Poker Network.
The decision by IGT, one of the industry leaders in online and mobile gaming solutions for regulated gaming markets, to add new countries into their blocked list stems from its intention to keep its hands clean and stay away from what they believe are “gray markets” in the industry, or in other words, countries where there are no current legislation on online gaming. Pokerfuse.com reports that other countries included in the new list are China, Monaco, South Africa, and the Ivory Coast. In sum, the network’s list already includes over 50 countries. Thus, anybody from these countries who tries to sign up will have their account sign-ups blocked with the network also utilizing IP blocking to disallow potential players from accessing the site from their countries.
Of the four countries that was mentioned as part of that list, IGT’s decision to block players from Spain and Belgium comes as a result of new legislation in both countries where their online gaming regulations does not have any IGN skin as a valid license holder. The situation is also pretty clear in Cyprus, especially after a new online gambling bill was approved in the country essentially banning online casino and poker games. Not much of an argument on both those cases.
Australia, on the other hand, is a little trickier, especially after efforts are currently being made to relax the Interactive Gambling Act of 2001, which theoretically prohibits all types of online gambling to serve Australian customers. Despite the uncertainty on how much legs the move to liberalize the law has in the country, IGT is making sure that a concrete legislation is in place instead of risking to get their hands dirty
After all, the old Entraction network had a reputation for strictly adhering to online gambling regulations and it looks like their following the same mold even though their under new ownership. You can’t fault them for trying to be on the up-and-up on that end.
