VLT Software Providers Compared

If you are choosing a platform for a terminal floor, the hard part is not comparing features. Every vendor’s feature list looks the same in a brochure.

The hard part is that the suppliers in this market are not really competing with each other. They serve different kinds of operator at wildly different price points, and the one that is obviously right for a national lottery is obviously wrong for eight terminals in a shop.

This page sorts them into the three groups that actually exist, including the cases where our own VLT platform is not the right answer.

The three kinds of supplier

Tier-one manufacturers

IGT, Novomatic, Aristocrat, Light & Wonder, Playtech. Large, long-established companies that build the machine and the system together. This end of the market has been consolidating — IGT’s gaming business and Everi combined under Apollo ownership in July 2025 and now trade as IGT — which is worth knowing when you are comparing quotes that may predate it.

What you get. Everything, as a package: cabinet, software, content, certification, service contract and a named account manager. In markets where the regulator effectively expects a tier-one supplier, this is not merely the safe answer, it is the only answer.

What it costs. Capital expenditure per machine that runs into thousands, long procurement cycles, and hardware you cannot source or repair independently. Changing anything goes through them.

Choose them if you are operating in a strictly regulated market, at scale, with the capital and the timeline to match. If you are opening a licensed casino, start here and do not waste weeks looking elsewhere.

Established European VLT vendors

Amatic, Apollo Games, Synot, Kajot and similar houses in Austria and the Czech Republic. The middle of the market, and several of them are better known as game studios than as platform vendors.

What you get. Content European players already recognise, hardware and software designed together, and real certification in EU markets.

What it costs. Still a hardware-bundled model in most cases, with the hardware margin included whether you need their cabinet or not. Content and system are often coupled, which limits how freely you can mix in other studios.

Choose them if you are operating in Central or Eastern Europe, your players expect specific well-known titles, and a bundled cabinet suits how you buy.

Software-only platforms

Us, Riverslot, Sirplay and others. We sell the system; you source the hardware. This segment exists because a terminal is a PC, and once you accept that, the cabinet stops being something you have to buy from your software vendor.

What you get. A far lower cost per terminal, hardware you can buy and repair locally, and the freedom to change one without changing the other.

What it costs. You own the hardware decisions, including the mistakes. Certification of the complete machine is your responsibility in markets that assess machines as a whole. There is no single throat to choke when something breaks.

Choose them if you are running halls, shops or arcades in a market where tier-one pricing makes no commercial sense, and you would rather control your own hardware than have it chosen for you.

Six questions that separate them faster than a feature list

1. Does the price include hardware, and can you tell?

Bundled pricing hides the hardware margin. Ask what the software costs on its own. A vendor who cannot answer is telling you something.

2. What happens to your terminals if you leave?

Proprietary cabinets are hostages. PC-based terminals can run something else. This one question sets your negotiating position for the entire life of the contract, which is why it is worth asking on the first call rather than at renewal.

3. Who is responsible for certification, and of what?

Software certification and machine certification are different things. Get both answers in writing, for your specific market, before anything is signed.

4. What is the real cost per terminal over three years?

Licence or revenue share, plus hardware, plus support, plus the replacement cycle. A cheap licence on expensive locked hardware is not cheap.

5. Can you source a replacement part locally, this week?

A dead terminal earns nothing. In markets where imports are slow or expensive, this matters more than almost anything on a feature list, and it is the question operators most often wish they had asked.

6. Does the user structure match how your business actually works?

If you run halls through agents, a platform built around single-venue management will fight you every day. This is invisible in a demo and painful in production.

Where we fit, and where we don’t

We are a software-only platform. We licence the system; you build or buy the terminals.

What we do well

• Hardware you already own works. The minimum specification is a dual-core i3 with 4 GB of RAM and integrated Intel HD graphics. Refurbished office machines qualify.
• Weak connections are survivable. The client runs over Wi-Fi or LAN at up to 200 ms latency, where many server-based platforms degrade well before that.
• Sessions survive failures. Session state is held server-side and fully restored after power or connection loss.
• The structure fits distribution networks. A multi-level agent tree rather than a single-venue hierarchy, built for operators who run halls through dealers and agents.
• Content is not locked to us. More than 25,000 titles from over 150 studios, through one integration.

What we don’t do

• We are not a one-stop machine supplier. If you want finished cabinets delivered to your door as a single package, that is a different shape of company to us.
• We don’t certify your machine. The assembled machine is assessed locally, and that is your side of the line.
• We’re not the tier-one answer. In a market where the regulator expects IGT or Novomatic, choose IGT or Novomatic. We will say so on the first call rather than the third.
• We don’t supply every market. Not Romania, Malta, Latvia, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Curaçao or Bulgaria.
• TITO, hoppers and card readers are custom development, not standard product. Deliverable and quoted separately, but not in the box.

A vendor page that lists no weaknesses is a vendor page nobody believes. These are the five that lose us deals, and they are better read here than discovered in week three of an integration.

Questions operators ask

Who are the biggest VLT software providers?

By scale, the tier-one manufacturers: IGT, Novomatic, Aristocrat, Light & Wonder and Playtech. They build hardware and software together and dominate strictly regulated markets. Below them sit established European vendors such as Amatic, Apollo Games, Synot and Kajot, and then software-only platforms, including us.

What is the cheapest way to run gaming terminals?

A software-only platform on hardware you source yourself. It removes the hardware margin and lets you buy and repair locally. The trade-off is that hardware decisions, and machine-level certification in markets that assess complete machines, become yours.

Do I have to buy cabinets from my software provider?

Not if the software runs on standard hardware. Ours does — the minimum specification is met by ordinary office PCs, which is why operators retrofitting existing machines is a normal way to start rather than a compromise.

Is a cheaper platform less reliable?

Not inherently, but the six questions above are how you check rather than assume. Ask specifically about session recovery on power loss, latency tolerance, and what happens to your terminals if you leave. Those three answers tell you more than any feature comparison.

Which provider is best?

The one that matches your market, your scale and your capital. If a regulator expects a tier-one supplier, that is the answer and price is not the deciding factor. If you are running halls in a market where that pricing makes no sense, a software-only platform will serve you better.

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