Atlantic Casino Club, one of our blacklisted casino operators, offers more than 1,500 games from a wide variety of developers, including high-profile US-facing slots studios, such as Betsoft and BGaming. The casino looked like a top real-money casino when it launched, but unfortunately, the group running it started hosting pirated games and implementing policies that made it harder for successful players to cash out their winnings.
At first glance, Atlantic Casino appears to be a perfectly legitimate offshore casino site. They operate under a real casino license issued in Curacao (Master License 1668/JAZ), they won’t refuse your withdrawal requests outright like a typical scam site, and their games seem to be in order. In fact, they even have live dealer options, which is usually a good sign.
Unfortunately, once you look closer, the facade begins to crack.
Certain sections of the site are designed to obscure information rather than deliver it:
There’s something wrong with the Terms and Conditions when it comes to payouts:
The Seal of Approval from Slotsia, a Swedish online casino review site, leads to a notice that said approval was revoked in 2019:
…and on top of all that, Atlantic Casino is a part of the AffPower Group, which made a name for itself by being involved in one of the ugliest casino software piracy scandals of the past decade.
In April 2016, LCB, a site about casino bonuses, discovered that all the AffPower casinos were offering unlicensed Novomatic games. The casinos removed said games once they were contacted in this matter, only to replace them with a bunch of pirated NetEnt games shortly thereafter.
The story on LCB was updated accordingly, and the portal alleged that AffPower launched a negative SEO campaign to punish them. If that wasn’t bad enough, the pirated software was rehosted under a deceptive subdomain name, casinomodyle.com, which was similar to NetEnt’s approved casinomodule.com.
As the story developed, many experts, most notably WizardOfOdds, warned that the altered or pirated software could be rigged and thus very unsafe to play.
As expected, upon closer inspection, it turned out the games’ jackpots were considerably lower than in the jackpots at safe and trusted casinos. It should also be noted that the pirated games weren’t running on a certified NetEnt random numbers generator. Thus, it’s quite possible that the odds were affected, too, although it’d be impossible to verify that retroactively.
As the situation turned dire for AffPower, the pirated games were taken down and the people representing the group started pointing their fingers at their parent company, Game Tech, and specifically at one of the contracted re-sellers who supposedly supplied AffPower casinos with illegal content.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Instead of straightening their act, the AffPower/Game Tech Group was caught launching two new casinos – Cozyno and MagikSlots – under a shell company called Alpha Interactive Solutions. These casinos were recognized as a part of this rogue operation by their Curacao Master License – No. 1668/JAZ. Further business links were discovered, with certain people familiar with the case suggesting that as many as 25 separate companies and affiliate programs could be involved.
Aside from AffPower, Game Tech, and Alpha Interactive Solutions, other brands involved in this network likely include Conan Gaming Limited, Conversion Affiliates, Crazy Affs, Domiseda & Partners, GameScale Europe, Prism Marketing, Supaze, Tall Mountain Limited, Wiz Partners, Yucatan Gaming, and more.
Past scandals and poor reputation aside, one of the biggest problems with Atlantic Casino Club is that their terms and conditions are designed to block withdrawals or limit their size. Consider the following passage:
“1.7. Player’s use of any real money bonuses will be audited against the terms and conditions of the casino to ensure fair gaming and proper use of bonuses, which includes but is not limited to irregular play and betting rules. Real cash bonus is not cashable and must be wagered before any withdrawal request can be made. The maximum cashout is x10 of the real cash bonus received, and any excess amount will be removed upon approval of the withdrawal request.”
A typical online casino user who doesn’t read the fine print might be shocked to learn that their potential winnings are capped once the bonus is cleared, which is exactly what people running Atlantic Casino are counting on. They don’t want to steal from you outright, but everything is set up to make you expect a typical online casino experience, and then hit you with horrible expected value and red tape.
What is even worse is that they also had a clause that made the withdrawal limit dependent on the maximum deposit limit set by the user, which is a feature typically used by problem gamblers. These people simply have no qualms about preying on the most vulnerable parts of the iGaming community.
Atlantic Casino Club and all the other AffPower / Game Tech sites, such as EuroMoon, Osiris, Deuce Club, Cosmik, or Park Lane, aren’t what you’d normally call scam sites, as they typically avoid crossing the line into overt criminality. In fact, they put a lot of effort into trying to hide their scummy behavior behind a veneer of plausible deniability.
They did provide an explanation for their 2016 piracy stunt, and it would’ve been believable if not for all the brazen attempts at disinformation that followed. Technically speaking, they have the right to structure their Terms and Conditions in a way that’s as far removed from industry best practices and ethical considerations as one can get.
However, that doesn’t mean we have to fall for it. Avoid Atlantic Casino Club and any other sites that operate underLicense No. 1668/JAZ or have anything else to do with AffPower/Game Tech like a plague.
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