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AGCO Fines Booming Games $70,000 for Prohibited Auto-Play Feature in Ontario

• 9 min • By PlayCanadianCasino Team

What happened

Toronto, ON — The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) has ordered a $70,000 monetary penalty against Booming Games (Malta) Limited after prohibited auto-play functionality was made available to Ontario players on multiple slot games for several months. The penalty was published on the AGCO's news-lottery-and-gaming index on August 20, 2026, and is the second supplier-side enforcement action AGCO has issued in August after the Betty Gaming Ltd. $120,000 penalty on August 6, 2026.

Why auto-play is prohibited in Ontario

Auto-play allows a player to automatically play an online slot machine without the player having to manually initiate each spin. Ontario prohibits auto-play on slot games because removing the need for a player to actively initiate each wager can reduce opportunities to pause, assess their play and decide whether to continue. Requiring players to manually start each spin creates a deliberate pause between wagers. That pause can help maintain player awareness and control, reduce prolonged and uninterrupted play, and reduce the risk of gambling-related harm.

Ontario's game-design standards are among the toughest in North America. They are designed to reduce the potential for excessive intensity, speed and continuity of play, and to support informed player decision-making. The auto-play prohibition sits alongside minimum speed-of-play requirements (a minimum 2.5-second cycle between spins for regular slots, and 5 seconds for "quick-spin" or "turbo" modes), prohibitions on features that disguise the outcome of a wager, and stake-limit rules on linked jackpot games.

What AGCO found

The AGCO's investigation found that Booming Games failed to properly configure, test and monitor certain games before and after they launched in Ontario. As a registered gaming supplier, Booming Games is responsible for ensuring its games comply with Ontario's standards before they are made available to Ontario-licensed operators. The investigation was initiated through the AGCO's proactive and targeted compliance efforts — not in response to a player complaint.

Once the issue was identified, the AGCO notified the impacted igaming operator and the auto-play functionality for the affected games was disabled. The $70,000 penalty was then ordered against the supplier itself, with the operator not directly penalized in this action. The affected games have since been re-configured to require manual spin initiation.

What the regulator said

Auto-play is prohibited because it removes one of the simplest player-protection design features: the requirement to make a deliberate choice to keep playing. Each manual spin is a micro-decision moment — a chance for the player to check their session length, review their wager, or step away. When auto-play is enabled, that micro-decision moment disappears, and a player who would otherwise have stopped can continue indefinitely without a conscious opt-in. For a regulator whose mandate is to reduce gambling-related harm, that is the wrong direction.

Supplier-side enforcement is not new in Ontario

This is the third supplier-side enforcement action AGCO has issued in 2026, following a series of fines dating back to 2024:

  • August 2026: Booming Games — $70,000 for prohibited auto-play functionality on multiple slot titles.
  • August 2026: Betty Gaming Ltd. — $120,000 after underage individuals were able to create and fund online gambling accounts on a platform the supplier had provided for AGCO-licensed operators.
  • June 2026: Relax Gaming — $40,000 for operating a social casino-style product accessible to Ontario players on an unregulated, non-AGCO-licensed site.

The pattern is consistent. AGCO is enforcing against the entire supply chain — operators when they fail their player-due-diligence duties, suppliers when they ship non-compliant or improperly configured games, and product owners when they operate in Ontario without an AGCO registration. Each fine is public, tied to a specific product or platform, and signals to the rest of the market what AGCO considers unacceptable.

What this means for Ontario players

Players who have ever seen an "Auto Spin" or "Auto Play" button while playing an Ontario-licensed slot should know: that button should not be there. Ontario's standards explicitly prohibit auto-play, and any AGCO-licensed game that offered it was in violation. If a player used auto-play on an Ontario game before this penalty, that does not retroactively make it legal — the violation was on the supplier side, in how the game was configured, tested, and released.

Practical takeaways:

  • If you see an auto-play button on any Ontario-licensed slot, treat it as a bug and report it to the operator's customer support team. Operators are required to escalate such issues to the supplier and to AGCO.
  • Auto-play was always disabled because Ontario explicitly prohibits it. This penalty did not change the rule — it penalized a supplier that failed to comply with the rule.
  • The affected games have been re-configured. Any title that previously offered auto-play no longer offers it, and the manual-spins-only configuration is now in place across the Ontario market.
  • Players who want to limit session length can use the deposit-limit, time-out, and self-exclusion tools regulated by AGCO and operated by OLG (PlayStop) and by individual operators.

What this means for operators and suppliers

Suppliers shipping content to Ontario-licensed operators need to treat Ontario's game-design standards as a hard, non-negotiable gate, not a soft guideline. Auto-play prohibition is rule #1 in the standards — and this is now the second documented case in 2026 where a supplier shipped a game with auto-play enabled. Operators should also be testing their own game library for prohibited features and not relying on the supplier alone to catch violations. Pre-launch QA should include a check against Ontario's published game-design standards, not just a visual review.

AGCO's broader 2026 enforcement track

AGCO has issued at least nine public monetary penalties against iGaming operators and suppliers in 2026 — the most active enforcement year since Ontario's regulated iGaming market launched in April 2022. Enforcement themes this year have included:

  • Anti-money-laundering / KYC failures — at least three operator-side fines for inadequate customer due diligence.
  • Responsible-gambling standards — multiple fines tied to advertising that targeted self-excluded players or fell short of "responsible gambling messaging proximity" requirements.
  • Game-design compliance — including today's Booming Games fine and the earlier Betty Gaming underage-account case.
  • Unregulated offering — the Relax Gaming fine for a product accessible to Ontario players from outside the AGCO registration regime.

AGCO has been transparent that these fines are the visible output of a much larger proactive-monitoring programme. The penalty amounts ($40,000 to $200,000 per action in 2026) are calibrated to be material to a supplier or operator's P&L without being destructive — the regulator wants compliance, not bankruptcy.

Source and further reading

Bottom line

AGCO is sending a clear signal to suppliers: ship auto-play to Ontario and pay $70,000. Operators and suppliers that treat Ontario's game-design standards as a gating criterion — not a QA checklist — will not end up in a news release. Players using Ontario-licensed slots can now play knowing the underlying game library was retested for auto-play compliance. That is the intended consequence of this enforcement action.

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