James Elliott on how fake games slip onto operator sites, who profits from them, and why verification is becoming the strongest line of defence for players.
Fake casino games have become one of online gaming's fastest-growing threats, raising serious questions around player safety, trust and transparency.
In this episode of the iGaming News Podcast, James Elliott, Founder of Gamecheck, explains how fakes find their way onto operator platforms, who is behind them, and the safeguards he believes the industry needs to better protect players. The conversation covers his background in intellectual property law, why legal enforcement alone could not solve the problem, how the Gamecheck SEAL gives players a simple way to verify a site, and why consumer awareness may turn out to be the best defence of all.
Before founding Gamecheck, James Elliott trained as an intellectual property lawyer in London, working on the protection of inventions, copyright and trademarks. He moved into online gaming around 2005, with roles at PartyGaming (later bwin.party, now part of Entain) and as General Counsel at NetEnt.
It was at NetEnt that the problem first became clear. The studio's most sought-after titles were exactly the games every operator wanted in their lobby, and some chose not to pay for the privilege. Instead, near-identical fakes began circulating, convincing enough that players often could not tell the difference.
Pursuing the people responsible through the courts proved slow and expensive, with many hiding in remote jurisdictions or reappearing under a new company name. Elliott concluded that a transparent, public approach would do more for players than litigation: a way to let consumers know whether the games in front of them were genuine or cheap fakes. That idea became Gamecheck.
Elliott compares a fake game to a forged banknote. It can look and feel like the real thing, but something is missing, whether that is a watermark, the same quality, or the same underlying value. A player may pick it up without ever realising it is not genuine.
For players, the biggest disappointment tends to be the return to player. As Elliott puts it, if someone has gone to the trouble of faking a game, why would they build one that pays out in the same way as the licensed original? The graphics may be identical, but the experience and the odds are not.
The scale of the problem is bigger than most people assume. It is most common in unregulated markets, where operators may simply be unable to obtain the real games because the provider will not supply that market. In those cases, fakes become the next best option.
Worryingly, fakes also appear in some regulated markets. Elliott notes that certain operators, whether knowingly or not, have been found hosting fake games, and some go as far as mixing fakes in among genuine titles, serving real content to some players or at some times of day and fakes at others, purely to avoid paying the full licence fee. He points to Latin America in particular, where Gamecheck has found fakes present even on more established, well-known brands.
Top-tier operators have little incentive to take the risk, because exposure is so damaging. The problem tends to concentrate around newer brands launching into markets without a clear leader. As for who is behind it, Elliott is clear that this is organised activity rather than rogue studios. Producing and distributing convincing fakes takes real technical skill and access to operators, and he has even seen people working the floor at trade fairs, offering fake titles at half the price. Much like fake designer goods, it happens because there is money to be made, and sometimes the operators themselves do not realise what they are buying.
For operators, the cost of being caught is reputational and immediate. Once players learn that a site has hosted fakes, consumer confidence collapses. Elliott describes how, after Gamecheck exposed sites in Brazil and Latin America, word travelled quickly through player communities, and trust proved very hard to rebuild.
For players, the risk is straightforward. You think you are buying an experience and a fair chance to win, but a fake may not perform as expected and may never pay out the way the genuine title would. In Elliott's view, offering fakes is a high-risk strategy, because sooner or later you will be found out.
He also reflects on why regulation has not caught the issue sooner. Regulation has come a long way on anti-money laundering, game fairness, and safer gambling, but the possibility of fake games sitting inside the ecosystem was largely unforeseen. Gamecheck has been building relationships with regulators and offering a practical solution, so that players can check a site before they ever make a first deposit.
There are two sides to what Gamecheck does. The first is direct collaboration with game providers, including Evolution, Pragmatic Play, Push Gaming, Blueprint Gaming and Spribe. Researchers play sessions across different jurisdictions and check where each game is being served from. If a title is delivered from infrastructure belonging to the operator or the provider, it is legitimate. If it is served from somewhere else, it is very likely a fake. Crucially, Gamecheck never makes that call alone: it confirms with the original provider before publishing any verdict, then records the result.
The second is the Gamecheck SEAL, a collaboration with operators. Gamecheck tests an operator's site and, where it is satisfied there are no fakes, the operator can display the Gamecheck SEAL, a QR code that works like a hologram of authenticity. Players download the Gamecheck App, scan the code with their phone, and instantly see whether the site has been checked and whether any fakes were found. Elliott wants the Gamecheck SEAL to become the thing players look for before they play.
Verification is not a one-off. Gamecheck revisits sites on a regular basis, because a site that was clean once may not stay that way. The highest-earning, most popular titles in a given market are the most likely targets, and the Gamecheck SEAL stands for ongoing monitoring rather than a single check.
The more providers Gamecheck works with, the clearer the picture becomes. When one studio's titles are found to be faked, Gamecheck can draw the links and alert other providers, checking whether their content is affected by the same group. That shared, independent intelligence helps providers' enforcement teams work more efficiently and gives players far better information about the sites they use.
Elliott is candid that Gamecheck is one piece of a wider toolkit that also includes game testing labs and other trust signals. But by deliberately looking where fraudsters do not expect, and by spotting fake sessions even within individual user accounts, Gamecheck adds a layer of protection that is hard to replicate.
A fake casino game is an unauthorised copy of a slot, table or live game from a recognised studio. It can look and sound almost identical to the real title, but because the software has been copied rather than licensed, the fairness, quality and pay-out behaviour can differ from the genuine version. James Elliott compares it to a forged banknote: it resembles the real thing but is missing what gives it value.
Enter the online casino's web address into the Search Tool on Gamecheck.com to see whether any fakes have been found. If a site has not been checked yet, you can ask Gamecheck to investigate it through the Request Verification page. Where an operator displays the Gamecheck SEAL, you can also scan its QR code with the Gamecheck app to confirm the site has been checked.
Fakes are unauthorised copies, so they sit outside the testing and oversight applied to licensed titles. They may look like the real games but behave differently, and the pay-outs you expect may never arrive. In short, you are depositing money to play software the original provider never approved.
Gamecheck researchers play sessions on an online casino from different locations and check where each game is being served from. They then confirm directly with the original provider whether the title is genuine. Gamecheck never classifies a game as fake on its own judgement; a verdict is only published once the provider has confirmed it.
Gamecheck collaborates with leading studios including Evolution, Pragmatic Play, Push Gaming, Blueprint Gaming and Spribe. These providers help confirm whether titles are genuine, and by aggregating intelligence across partners Gamecheck can spot patterns and give players clearer information about the sites they use.
