Exclusive: GameAccount Network signs multimillion dollar platform deal with Aristocrat
GameAccount Network has signed its biggest ever online software enablement deal just months after Australian land-based supplier almost acquired the business for a multi-million pound sum.
Australian slot manufacturer Aristocrat is to replicate GameAccount Network’s Internet Gaming System, principally for land-based US casino customers, after talks to buy the gaming software specialists for a multi-million pound sum over the summer broke down.
The UK-based gaming software business, that supplies a large number of European operators with its Internet Gaming System (IGS), skill and casino games across its European networks, has signed a deal with Aristocrat to effectively replicate its core internet gaming system for the US market.
The two companies originally struck a multi-year US partnership in August last year with Aristocrat setting up hardware in Nevada and licensing GameAccount Network’s IGS and its games content to Aristocrat in order for it to sign-up some of its 300 existing US land-based casino clients online with a range of freeplay slots, casino table games and skill games, including recreational poker variants. This solution became the Aristocrat ‘nLive solution in the US and premiered at G2E in 2011.
In April this year, GameAccount Network and Aristocrat launched their first joint freeplay online casino website hosted in Nevada, Myliveonlinecasino.com for the Maryland Live! Casino, while in October Aristocrat launched a freeplay casino for Michigan’s Island Resort & Casino.
Aristocrat has been examining various routes into online for a number of years, one of which was its partnership approach with 10 year-old GameAccount Network which delivered the USA nLive Internet Gaming System and developed more than a dozen online casino slot games to date.
eGaming Review understands, however that the relationship was working so well that a deal to acquire GAN was just weeks away from taking place with both parties agreeing a multi-million pound fee.
The deal announced today will see GameAccount Network continue to develop and distribute Aristocrat games into Europe for the foreseeable future and for Aristocrat to buy and replicate GameAccount Network’s IGS without GameAccount Network’s games content, in order to achieve operational and technical independence over time.
Despite having to rely in part on GameAccount Network’s technical staff to work with it as part of the integration, education and ongoing maintenance process, Aristocrat will effectively “own” its own independent gaming platform.
The source added: “They needed to own and control a gaming solution for the US market but they couldn’t do it without buying the technology or a company that could do it for them.”