Accusations of cheating have been around for as long as gambling exists, and in many cases they were true. That’s why it’s perfectly logical that the first online casino sites that popped up around mid-to-late 1990s were immediately met with suspicion. The players were accustomed to physical interfaces like the roulette wheel, and they were slow to trust the way online games handled probabilities.
Looking back, it’s absolutely remarkable how the pioneers of the industry managed to turn around the public opinion. It took a long time and a lot of innovation, and it opened the door for the safe and stable gaming environments we know today.
RNG-Driven Games Initially Faced Resistance
Back when online gambling was still making the first steps, nobody knew what a random number generator was or how it worked. Replacing something as simple as a deck of cards with digital pixie dust was a thornier transition that you would imagine. An average gambler couldn’t know if the website was dealing the cards fairly or fixing the game to the benefit of the house, which greatly limited growth of early casino sites. It didn’t help that some of the providers were indeed shady, giving a bad name to the whole industry and feeding into the fears of the player base. Much of those fears turned out to be unfounded – as we know today, RNG technology is good enough to ensure truly random distribution of outcomes and digital versions of casino games are generally fairly administered.
Brand Reputation as a Guarantee of Fairness
Things started to change as a group of better providers started to stand out and get some good reviews from players who won and had no trouble collecting their winnings. Some of those providers were established casino companies who saw online expansion as just another channel to reach new customers in distant locations. Reputable brands managed to attract a wider population of players who would be unlikely to trust a completely unknown website. With their reputations on the line, they had no incentives to rig the games and compromise their integrity. That was the first step towards establishing a relationship of trust with an inherently cautious player base, but it would be some time before this trust extended to the industry at large.
Transparent Odds and Winners
Educating the players about the inner working of online game of chance was a process that required the operators to change their modus operandi. Transparency became a keyword that drove decision making across the board, from user interface to catalogue of games. Today, we take it for granted that every game in the official Tikal Casino online collection will display Return-to-Player percentage and other stats that explain the odds to win or lose. Websites also like to show the lists of winners and the amounts they won. That wasn’t always the case, and the acceptance of this approach was gradual and spurred by player demand.
Relationship and Community Building
The deciding factor in establishing trust was the creation of both formal and informal networks that allowed players to easily check the details about each casino. Operators began actively pursuing communication with their members through social media, mailing lists, etc. At the same time, countless blogs and community groups appeared where players could talk to each other and exchange their experiences, good or bad. This ecosystem made it possible to instantly recognize risky websites and warn everyone to stay away. This kind of ‘word of mouth’ verification was more effective than any centralized effort by the operators, and it remains a hugely important safety mechanism to this day.
