Skip to content
Gambling-trends — Symphony Symbiotics: Your Industry Hub — Finance — Meet the Icons of the Gaming World

Pennsylvania Court Rules Pace-O-Matic's Gaming Terminals Are Legal Skill Games

A landmark ruling declares these controversial terminals legal—but are they truly skill games or gambling in disguise? Critics and operators clash over their future.

,   and  Administrator
2 min read
The image shows a man playing a slot machine with the words "Jackpot" on it. He is surrounded by a...
The image shows a man playing a slot machine with the words "Jackpot" on it. He is surrounded by a board with text and pictures of fruits, suggesting that he is playing online casino games.

Ramona Depares

Ramona has been working in journalism for 15+ years, specializing in entertainment, lifestyle and online gaming news. She was head of media for one of the biggest organizers of gaming conferences, giving her a taste of staying ahead of the curve of online casino and sports betting trends.

Read Full Bio

Url copied!

Ramona Depares

  • Url copied!

As cries about an unlevel playing field between PA online casinos, retail casinos and skill games continue, Pace-O-Matic remains unshaken in the belief that its games will never be classified as gambling.

In an interview with Allied News, Michael Barley, Pace-O-Matic's chief public affairs officer, stated that the company had never lost a court case in Pennsylvania or anywhere "on the legality of our game and it being determined a skill game". Pace-O-Matic is the leading distributor of skill game terminals across the Keystone State

Council on Compulsive Gambling: They're Betting Devices

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania had already ruled in November that Pace-O-Matic's terminals are skill games, not slot machines. However, the company has been facing considerable backlash from operators, some of which want to see the games taxed in the same manner as slots.

And they're not alone. Within the same Allied News feature, Josh Ercole, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of Pennsylvania, disagrees, goes as far to call the games "betting devices". He described the terminals as being "so similar to what we see on the gaming floor in casinos across the state, with slot machines and that type of game", adding that the decision that they shouldn't be constituted as gambling simply because they include an element of skill is "dangerous".

Pace-O-Matic has consistently focused on the fact that the games require a level of skill, with Barley saying that the results of the game are based on "how people play". Drawing a comparison to the RNG process of casino games, he added that the terminals contain no "compensating algorithm involved in determining a win or a loss, as there is with programmed slot machines".

Url copied!

Read also:

Related

Latest