Who makes the games, and which of them turn up at all of them

140 names, and the 16 that turn up everywhere

Between them the three lists name 140 different studios.

Sixteen of them appear on all three: 3 Oaks, AvatarUX, BGaming, Booming Games, Endorphina, Evolution, GameArt, NetEnt, Novomatic, PG Soft, Platipus, Popiplay, Pragmatic Play, Relax Gaming, Spinomenal and Thunderkick. A further 24 appear on two of the lists. Who appears on which list is stated for each operator: game studios at crypto casinos.

The remaining 100 names appear on exactly one list. In other words: nearly three quarters of all the studios mentioned are mentioned by only one of the three operators.

The core is therefore small and the fringe large. Anyone looking for a particular title cannot assume it exists next door just because the two shelves look the same size.

Why the core is as small as it is

The overlap of 16 names is not randomly composed. These are the studios that sell most widely and hold the most agreements, and they are therefore also the ones that say least about the difference between two casinos.

The fringe is where the difference lies, and it is in practice impossible to compare, because two of the three lists are the only ones that can be held up against each other for a given name. With seven operators publishing no list, it is not possible to say whether a studio is missing or merely unstated.

The comparison can therefore answer who states what, but not who has the most.

Live tables: five of ten, and never the casino's own

Five of the ten run a live casino with tables that are filmed: Cloudbet, BC.Game, Wild.io, BetFury and Shuffle.com.

The tables are almost never the operator's own. Evolution appears on all three provider lists and is the most common supplier of table games with a real dealer. Ezugi appears on two of them, at TrustDice and BetFury. Vivo Gaming appears only at BetFury, Absolute Live only at TrustDice, and Wild.io additionally carries separate entries for Pragmatic Play Live and Live Vegas.

That means the dealer you see sits in a studio run by a third party, often from a completely different country from the one the casino is registered in. The rules at the table, the minimum stake and the recording belong to that studio, not to the site you logged in to.

The name of that third party appears in the provider list at three operators and nowhere else.

The same company, two spellings

When the three lists are laid side by side, a problem appears that makes any count uncertain: the same studio is spelled differently from list to list. Capitalisation, spacing and apostrophes vary, because the lists were typed in by hand by three different desks with no shared code.

A count that counts strings of characters instead of companies makes two studios out of one.

This is not a quarrel about commas. It shows what a provider list is: a self-declaration, not a register. It cannot be checked against an authority the way a licence number can, and it carries no date telling you when it was last changed.

What a provider list does not say

Three pieces of information are missing from all three lists, and they are precisely the three a player looks for.

The number of games is missing. A studio on the list may be represented by one title or by two hundred, so «80 studios» says nothing about how large the game floor is.

The return-to-player percentage is missing. It belongs to the individual title and is published by the studio, and many games exist in several versions with different percentages. Which version has been installed is in none of the lists. That distinction — who owns the number, and what it does not say about one evening — is dealt with under slots.

Availability is missing. Whether a title is open to your country is settled by the agreement between the studio and the operator, and that agreement is published nowhere.

How to use the information

Check first whether the operator publishes a list at all. Seven out of ten do not, and that is in itself information about how much the operator is willing to show before a deposit.

Then check the name you are after in the list, and allow for the spelling: the same company is not always written the same way from list to list.

And keep the question of the shelf apart from the question of the money. Which games count towards a wagering requirement is in the bonus terms and not in the provider list, and who the operator is as a company is under the licence and the register.

The game shelf is the part of an online casino that is bought in almost in its entirety — and therefore the part where two casinos most resemble each other.