Game classification by market

Before a game can follow any rule, a market has to decide what the game legally is. That classification — casino game, named product, lottery, or nothing at all — determines which licence the operator needs, which technical standards it certifies against, which design rules apply, and sometimes whether the game may exist there at all. The matrix below classifies seven game types across seven regulated markets, verified cell by cell against the regulator's own text: the same crash title is a named, purpose-regulated product in Brazil, a generic casino game in Great Britain, Malta and Ontario, a case-by-case approval in New Jersey — and effectively outside the licensable catalogue in Germany.

Why the class matters

A game's legal class is the switchboard for everything else: it fixes the licence the operator must hold, the certification standard the title is tested against, the design rules that bite in play (autoplay bans, speed floors), the tax base the revenue falls under — and, in closed-catalogue markets, whether the game can be offered at all. The mechanics of a game do not change at the border; its legal wrapper does. That is why one title can ship unchanged into one market and need re-engineering, a different licence or a shelved launch in the next.

Four regulatory patterns

Across the verified markets, classification follows four recognisable patterns. Named-product regimes write the game into law: Brazil's betting ordinance regulates 'crash'-type games by name, down to cash-out behaviour. Form-based catch-alls define a class by its shape: Malta's Type 1 — games of chance played against the house with RNG-determined outcomes — captures crash, mines or plinko without ever naming them, and Great Britain's casino-games class works the same way. Certification-gated open lists admit any game that clears the gate: Ontario's standards apply to listed types 'but not limited to' them, and New Jersey approves titles one by one under a public-interest catch-all. Closed catalogues invert the default: in Germany, whatever is not expressly licensable is prohibited, and Sweden's commercial online licence is a three-item list.

The crash test

Crash and instant-win games are the stress test for every classification system, because they fit none of the classic moulds — not reel-based like a slot, not a table game, not a lottery. Reading their row across the matrix: Great Britain treats them as casino games other than slots (the Gambling Commission preserved 'crash games' by name in its 2023 games-design consultation, which also means the 2025 slots stake limits do not reach them); Malta captures them silently through the Type 1 definition; Ontario admits them through the test-lab certification route; Brazil regulates them explicitly, article by article; New Jersey clears titles case by case, with the first dedicated crash supplier filing to enter only in 2025; and in Germany and Sweden the regulator has simply never addressed them — which, in closed-catalogue systems, defaults to 'not licensable as such'.

Monopoly seams: lotteries, bingo, scratch

The most restricted row is not crash — it is scratch and instant lottery, monopoly-fenced in five of the seven markets. Great Britain allows online instant wins only as good-cause lottery products; Germany and Sweden reserve them to state lottery companies; Ontario keeps them on the government agency's own channel; New Jersey has no online instant lottery at all. Malta is the outlier, licensing scratch as a commercial Type 1 vertical. The same seam runs under bingo and keno, which split between commercial gaming classes and state lottery regimes depending on the market. And the deepest subtlety: the same mechanic can live on both sides of the seam — a scratch-style instant-win title sold by a casino operator is legally a casino game, while the identical-looking product in the lottery channel is a lottery.

How to read the matrix

Every cell was checked against the regulator's own text — the statute, the ordinance, the standards page — and then adversarially re-verified; two cells were deliberately weakened after that review rather than overstated, and 'unclear' is used wherever a regulator has never addressed a game type, because in this field the absence of a position is itself a finding. The matrix reflects classification, not market reality: an 'unclear' market may have the game running offshore, and a 'yes' market may have few titles live. Classifications shift with each new ordinance — cells carry the verification date, not a promise of permanence.

Worked example

Key facts

Classification by market

Yes = permitted under a named or settled class · Restr. = monopoly-only, partial rollout or case-by-case approval · Unclear = the regulator has not addressed it · No = expressly outside the licensable modality. Hover a cell for the licence class.

Crash & instant-win, market by market

Sources (8)