About this app
What is Fat Banker?
Five years from now, Curwen expects the development landscape – and the studios operating within it – to look markedly different.
“I don’t think the successful studio of the future necessarily has hundreds of people,” he says. “It could be a relatively small group of extremely talented people with great ideas, strong brands and a very good understanding of players, supported by technology that does much of the heavy lifting.”
That would also shift the basis on which studios compete. If sophisticated development capabilities become accessible to a wider range of creators, scale alone becomes less of an advantage.
About Fat Banker
His appointment signals a continuation of UK influence within GREF, even as the Gambling Commission undergoes personnel changes. Ruth Evans was named the new Gambling Commission chair, taking over from Charles Counsell after over a year in the position.
In addition, Olivia Petit has been appointed as board secretary of GREF. Petit is an associate professor at KEDGE Business School, where her research specialises in consumer behaviour in digital environments and emerging technologies.
Kathryn covers bitesize breaking news with a primary focus on EMEA and US legislation. A proud North Walian, fluent Welsh speaker and lifelong Wrexham FC fan – long before Hollywood came calling.
What is Fat Banker?
Operators must maintain permanent mechanisms for age verification, self-exclusion, voluntary time and wagering limits, and information on the user’s own gambling behaviour. Self-exclusion must be effective with all authorised operators.
The text also prohibits bets placed using credit cards, the use of predictive models to identify moments of greater vulnerability, and platform design mechanisms that hinder a conscious decision to stop betting, leave the service, or activate limits and blocks. Operators must maintain permanent alerts about compulsive gambling, indebtedness and asset loss, and adopt verifiable protocols for identifying risky behaviour.
The proposal establishes criteria for classifying products according to their potential for harm. Among the characteristics considered are instantaneous or short-lived results, continuous repetition at short intervals, use of random mechanisms to determine the outcome, intermittent rewards, near-miss incentives, incentives to recover losses and features that make it difficult to stop betting or induce successive, impulsive, or increasingly valuable bets.
