This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.
At the end of May 2016 the Gambling Commission announced"Testing Strategy"consultation various updates to the Testing strategy for compliance with remote gambling and software technical standards (the ), following a in December last year. Whilst most of the changes clarify existing obligations, the inclusion of a new section on return to player (RTP) monitoring and an annual games testing audit will be of particular interest to operators.
In accordance with the RTP obligations (section 5), licensees must now ensure “sufficient monitoring” is in place for both under and overpayments to customers (by calculating actual RTP against that expected). The frequency of such measurements will depend on the volume of play of the game (calculated as either the number of games or the amount of turnover).
The Commission accepts the additional burden this requirement may impose on operators, stating that "the majority of changes to the testing strategy reinforce existing requirements or make explicit measures that will already exist within well-run businesses. We accept that implementing processes to monitor live RTP (and update any contractual arrangements as required) may take some time where this practice has not been implemented". In light of this RTP monitoring will not need to be in place until 1 September 2016.
The new version of the Testing Strategy also introduces a new requirement for an annual games testing audit (Section 4) which must be conducted by a Commission approved test house. This requirement, which only applies to licensees that hold a software licence and a remote bingo, casino or virtual betting licence, will come into force in the first half of 2017. The Testing Strategy confirms that the Commission still expects those that are exempt from the annual audit requirement to seek assurance that games and updates have been tested in accordance with the Testing Strategy prior to release.
As a minimum, the test house will need to check a random sample of minor updates, confirm that licensees have adhered to required change controls, and confirm the list of games made available to consumers and that effective RTP monitoring is in place.
Other than this, the main changes from the July 2015 version of the Testing Strategy are:
- an executive summary has been added;
- the approach section has been updated (section 2) and Table 1 (previously Table 5) – which sets out the extent of testing required by risk - has been simplified to illustrate those requirements which require internal or external testing;
- further guidance has been provided as to what constitutes a "major" and "minor" update and the procedure for testing section has been re-ordered, with the now redundant transitional provisions being removed (Section 3 and Annex A);
- further guidance on the channel testing section has been added (paragraph 3.18); and
- additional good practice guidelines (effective as of 1 September 2016) for in-house testing have been added (section 6).
Save for those deadlines mentioned above, all other requirements are effective immediately.
The latest version of the Testing Strategy can be found here.
