The group behind online casino SpilleAutomater.com has officially defended its decision to void the 840,000 NOK winnings won by a player earlier this month. Play Cherry Ltd have been forced to act after a number of stories appeared in the Norwegian media over the last few days.
As reported by Gamingslots on Monday, Nina Larsen Kvam won the staggering amount, approximately £75,000 or $118,000, from a 300 NOK bet after an alleged computer error occurred on one of the slots at the casino. The winning total was later removed and her account was made inaccessible.
At the time of the incident, SpilleAutomater.com claimed that the winnings had been triggered due to a fault on the slot MoonTemple and were therefore forced to declare the winnings void and remove them from the player’s account.
In a further twist, Kvam, 25, was offered a compensation package of 30,000 NOK by the casino if she did not go to the media with her story about the winnings being deleted from her account and her account being suspended. An offer that Kvam subsequently rejected.
However, a statement from SpilleAutomater.com has now defended the decision to declare the winnings void and to also temporarily put a block on the player’s account due to the technical glitch the casino encountered.
CEO of SpilleAutomater.com Marius Andersen said “In case of system failure or a game (a deviation from the normal functioning of the game for whatever reason) that results in mistakes in odds calculation, charges, fees, bonuses or payout, or conversion between current currencies, (‘System Error’), [the company] will seek to place all parties directly affected by such system errors in the position they were in before the system error occurred.”
Andersen added “SpilleAutomater.com reserves the right to void all bets that were the subject of such system errors and to remove any payments given as a direct result of the system error.”
Parent company Play Cherry Ltd also added their comments to the discussion when they released a statement also defending the decision by SpilleAutomater.com to not reward the player with the full winnings.
A Play Cherry Ltd spokesperson said “As you probably understand, we cannot go in to details too much about an individual player and comment on any details, however, we would like to comment about what actually happened. A new game was released in the evening on the 20th November. We received information shortly after the game had been released that the gaming provider had decided to disable this particular game for all their partners and as a result of this we immediately removed it from all of our sites.”
The spokesperson continued “Our standard procedures are that we temporarily block affected accounts to make sure that there is no more activity on the account in case there is something wrong. We informed the player within the same evening that the account was locked temporarily due to a suspected error in the particular game and updated the player in question frequently throughout the investigation. While there was an on-going investigation from the gaming provider they concluded that there was a defect in the game where the game paid out multiple times the winnings as stated in the pay-table.”
Kvam and her legal representatives have since hinted at the possibility of seeking further legal action against the casino.