Some of the more disappointing news coming out of the Australian online casino industry last week was the fact that MyBet Casino has succumbed to the same licencing issues as other operators and had to block access to their range of Aristocrat pokies. As with other operators, such as Bet365, the Aristocrat games remain available to international players and Aussies continue to be welcome at the casino for many of their other games, but the final trustworthy operator with Aristocrat pokies among their selection has now made it a clean sweep of blocks.

The somewhat murky legal landscape surrounding online casino gambling in Australia, where players neither have explicit permission to play online nor are banned from doing so, has led to numerous software providers encouraging operators to put such blocks in place. International Game Technology, or IGT, is in exactly the same position whereby Aussie players are prevented from enjoying the games online.

It is of course little more effort than flicking a switch to block Aussie players. Various websites filter content based on the perceived location of the visitor, and online casinos in Australia can go one step further as they almost all require members to submit and validate account information including address details. Basically, online casinos know where the player is physically located through a number of means, and so it is easy for them to comply with the restrictions placed upon them, often by the poker machine manufacturers themselves.

Both Aristocrat and IGT are the leading suppliers of land based poker machines in Australia, and the opportunities to sell their games in the country is of course intrinsically linked to government licencing. Such significant market shares are something that neither company wishes to jeopardise, and they no doubt feel that actively discouraging online play of their games in Australia both keeps senior decision makers happy and continues to attract Aussie players to the land based equivalents.

Fortunately, as Aristocrat can rightfully be considered something of a market leader in the industry, they have provided inspiration for some of the best online-only casino software providers and players in Australia are not entirely out of luck when it comes to enjoying extremely similar games at their leisure. As soon as we got wind of MyBet’s decision to block the games for online players, we immediately set about finding the very best alternatives for online play in the country, many of which share the same themes and gameplay mechanics that land based players will have become accustomed to. In some cases, the alternatives are virtually the exact same poker machine, just with a different name and slightly updated symbols. You can find out more about these games on our brand new Aristocrat Exclusives page here on Online Casino Australia.