Grand Prive leaves Microgaming platform

The Grand Prive group of casinos left Microgaming's software platform this week. In a move that was not publicly announced, Bella Vegas, Casino Grand Bay, Jupiter Club Casino, Lake Palace Casino and Road House Reels switched to BetOnSoft NV software. Villa Fortuna Casino, which is also operated by Grand Prive, is now using BetOnSoft's software as well.

The casinos have also switched licensing jurisdictions, moving from the Kahnawake to Netherlands Antilles. And the casinos no longer bear the eCOGRA Approved Site seal.

The decision to change software providers and jurisdictions comes 15 months after affiliates began blacklisting Grand Prive and Grand Prive's casinos for shutting its affiliate program down and ending payments to affiliates who still had active players.

Grand Prive's decision to violate its promise of lifetime commissions to webmasters infuriated the affiliate community. In addition to blacklisting Grand Prive's group of casinos, affiliates and the affiliate community continued to keep the topic alive, hoping the negative publicity would force Grand Prive to reach a settlement or shame Microgaming into taking action against its licensee.

In addition to switching to BetOnSoft software, the Grand Prive group of casinos moved to "new" Web site addresses as well. These new addresses are the same as the original ones, except the prefix "bet" has been added on. For example, bellavegas.com became betbellavegas.com and grandprive.com became betgrandprive.com.

Early reaction to Grand Prive's move from the webmaster community indicates affiliates will be blacklisting the new Grand Prive sites as well.

BetOnSoft was a little-known software provider until now. Other online casinos using BetOnSoft software include Mandarin Palace, Lucky Creek, Treasure Mile and Grand Eagle.