Searching for an RGS?
This article covers the following topics:
What is an RGS?
An RGS or Remote Gaming Server plays a crucial role in delivering games to users and handling various aspects of the gambling experience. This includes the following
- Game Hosting: The Remote Gaming Server hosts the gambling games, such as slot machines, blackjack, roulette, and other casino games. These games are developed and stored on the server.
- Random Number Generator (RNG): Many gambling games, particularly online slots and card games, rely on random number generators to ensure fairness. The RGS often houses the RNG to determine game outcomes.
- Data Security: Remote Gaming Servers also play a critical role in ensuring the security and integrity of the gambling platform. They handle financial transactions, user data protection, and implement measures to prevent cheating and fraud.
- Regulatory Compliance: In many jurisdictions, online gambling is subject to strict regulations. Remote Gaming Servers must comply with these regulations, ensuring fair play, responsible gambling features, and adherence to local laws.
Build vs buy?
This is a critical decision to make early in the process. An RGS doesn’t need to be complex. Unless you have experience and learnings from building an RGS, an increasing number of companies are able to launch games quicker by buying or licensing an RGS.
With there being so many options out there, what do you look out for in an RGS? When evaluating an RGS for clients, Pocket Rockets Gaming look into over 30 different aspects of the platform.
Ease of Game Build
We look into how easy it is to build games on the RGS. Areas to consider include:
- What capabilities are provided for front-end and back-end developers to independently build and integrate the game?
- How functional is the mock tool for forcing outcomes?
- What functionality is provided in the GDK (Game Development Kit) to speed up building and testing the game?
- How easily can games be localised and how can support for currencies be extended?
- Does the RGS provide the ability to be able to replay games as needed by some regulators?
Ease of Operator Integration
Once you got your games build and running on your RGS, how will you distribute the games? Your RGS will need to be integrated into Aggregators or Operator platforms. When the Operator or Aggregator Platform eventually get around to starting the RGS integration (a wait of over 3-6 months is actually quite short!), each integration can take 1-4 months to integrate and obtain the required sign-offs.
A faster time to market is actually possible if you buy/license an RGS platform. It’s possible to find RGS platforms that are already integrated into your target Aggregator/Operators and so the work should be more straight forward to configure your RGS and test the games end-to-end.
Operational costs
How complex is the architecture and how much will it cost to host your games? How quickly can you scale up your infrastructure or deploy into a new territory?
Some RGS Platforms might be very modular but this can be quite complex to operate. Others may be a monolith but modular within this.
The RGS Platform back-office systems vary in capabilities. Most will have the ability to review game rounds or to complete stuck bets. Others will offer most of the capabilities via APIs so that free-round campaigns can be automated.
Features
The features provided by the RGS Platform can vary considerably.
Do you need Progressive Jackpot capabilities? Are reference implementations of different slots mechanics provided? Does the GDK allow back-ends to be built in multiple programming languages?
When selecting an RGS Platform, it’s worth considering what you need in the short term and long term. For example a tournament system can be integrated with an RGS later.
Try before you buy
Some RGS Platform providers offer the ability to try before you buy. If you already have a game front-end, for a relatively low cost they can build the back-end and host the game on their RGS.
When you are ready, they can onboard your back-end developers so that they can build back-ends.
This SaaS model gives Games Studios the ability to start building and distributing games within months. Some of the RGS Platform providers will also offer the option to license the RGS including getting a copy of the source code so that you can host and operate yourselves in the future.
This is the route some of our clients are currently following as this doesn’t require a huge upfront cost but provides the fastest time to market through a broad set of operators.
How can Pocket Rockets Gaming help?
We have experience of building and operating RGS platforms and can advise Operators or Game Studios on the right approach based on your needs. Areas we’ve helped clients with include:
- Selection of the right RGS platform for their needs. Whether you need to perform due-diligence on the platform or whether you need guidance through the selection process and getting your first game live.
- Resolving performance or scaling issues. No-one likes reels spinning longer than designed.
- Provide guidance on how to build games so that they are ready to be distributed quickly into multiple markets following certification.