Launches and sign-ups extra 24 April 2015

Cherry AB-owned games supplier Yggdrasil Gaming has this week opened a brand new office in Krakow, Poland, to house technology teams including system administration, software development and quality assurance.

The new office (pictured), which currently has the capacity for 20 staff but could be extended to at least double that, comes after the company hired its first Poland team in July which up to this point had been working out of a local hotel.

“Since then we have grown rapidly and built up a lot of momentum, so we decided to start taking all development in-house, both back-end and front-end,” Fredrik Elmqvist, Yggdrasil CEO said. “This allows us to roll-out products and services quicker and cheaper, giving us greater scalability,” added.

At present, 14 staff are working out of the office and Elmqvist said the location should make it easier to attract good talent to grow numbers further.

“There are some great technical schools and colleges in the city. Major companies like Google have bases here, so tech people have been trained in the very best environments. It is also an absolutely beautiful city so it is easy to relocate people,” he added.

Sky Betting and Gaming‘s debut social gaming product Sky Hollywood Slots has unveiled three new slots games developed in-house by B2B partner OpenWager.

The trio of HD games Cake Off, Blooming Garden and Egg-tastic feature 3D graphics and take the total number of slots in the app to eight.

“In partnership with Sky Betting & Gaming, our team crafts fresh gaming experiences to satisfy the most tempted audience around the world,” OpenWager CEO, John Cahill, said.

“Sky Hollywood Slots stands out from the crowd and creates a strong meaningful connection with their entertainment brand,” he added.

Genesis Gaming has this week launched a new catalogue of slots games designed specifically for the social casino sector.

Operators which utilise the supplier’s new portfolio of games will gain access to 20 video slots games at once during initial integration.

“We have been providing high performing video slots for some leading social casino sites for a number of years.” Geoffrey Hansen, managing director at Genesis Gaming, said.

“We are taking our success and experience with these select Social Casino partners, and making some of our top real-money gaming titles available to Social Casino partners through a simple plug and play solution,” he continued.

Genesis Gaming also announced this week the launch of its latest real-money slots game Deep Sea Diver.

Stockholm-based slots supplier Quickspin has struck a deal with Videoslots.com to provide the operator with its full suite of mobile and web games.

“I look forward to a successful partnership with Videoslots.com,” Quickspin CEO, Daniel Lindberg, said.

“We are very excited to continue adding operators to our platform, letting them access all the platform’s innovative and promotional tools,” he added.

Bwin.party has become the second New Jersey operator to be awarded a casino service industry (CSIE) enterprise license by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).

The operator, which has partnered with the Borgata in the Garden State and provides the plaform for Borgatapoker.com, BorgataCasino.com and partypoker.com, had previously been using a temporary transactional waiver.

The news comes just days after bwin scooped the Poker Software Supplier of the Year trophy at the inaugural eGR North America Awards in San Francisco earlier this week, while the Borgata was crowned Operator of the Year.

Online horserace wagering operator Sportech has been awarded a casino service industry enterprise license by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).

The London-based firm said it believed it was among one of the first European operators to be awarded a “full gaming-related” license by the DGE.

Sportech processes all the wagering for the states online gaming industry, including at racecourses, off-track betting facilities, certain land-based casinos, plus online wagers.

The firm had been operating under a transactional waiver in the state for the last four and a half years, which is superseded by the new license.

Yahoo plans to take on daily fantasy sports (DFS) market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings after revealing plans to launch its own product by the end of summer.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced the firm’s plans to enter the daily market during the internet giant’s Q1 2015 earning’s call on Tuesday.

“We have a new daily fantasy offering that will launch this summer,” she said in a Tweet.

Exact details of the platform, including what sports it will offer contests on, remain unknown, but Yahoo said its daily offering would be live by the end of Q3.

The Tropicana Casino in New Jersey has formed a strategic partnership with social casino developer Ruby Seven Studios ahead of a planned entry into the social sector.

The operator said the partnership would enable it to bring “immersive, casino style branded gaming” to its existing customers, and enable players from around the world to access its free to play site.

Tropicana’s social casino offering will be available on mobile, desktop and Facebook.

Tropicana CEO Tony Rodio said the operator had been “studying the social gaming sector for some time” and was enthusiastic about the potential of providing “even more entertainment options” to its players.