Slower, Smaller, Smarter: Finland’s Proposed Online Slots Regulations Make A Whole Lot Of Sense

The phrase “give it a spin” sounds so innocent. But when applied as literally as possible to the activity of playing slot machines, the innocence varies.

Every gambler is different when it comes to what types of games may tap into their vulnerabilities toward tilt, excess, or full-on addiction. For some it’s poker, for others it’s sports betting. For one guy it’s the craps table at the local casino, for one gal it’s online blackjack.

For me, it’s online slots. I’m not saying I routinely go on tilt or have ever lost money I couldn’t afford to lose. I am among the more annoyingly responsible gamblers you’ll ever come across. But when I play slots — something I absolutely never used to do, knowing that the games favored the house more than most and failing to grasp any of the appeal of pushing a button and watching reels spin — I can feel those tiny tugs in ways I don’t when I’m at the sportsbook or the blackjack table.

So, are online slots the most “dangerous” gambling activity? It depends on who you are. Nobody should make a blanket statement on the topic. But from my personal perspective, yes. Online slots can be wonderfully fun, but they can also grab hold of you and refuse to let go until you’re swimming in regret.

And as someone who thoroughly enjoys online slots as an entertainment activity and wants to see them remain legal and accessible, I must say this: The government of Finland is taking a much better, smarter approach to offering its citizens regulated online slots than any state in the U.S. has.

Take it slow

Last week, Finland’s Ministry of the Interior introduced a collection of suggested regulations for slots ahead of the planned 2027 launch of regulated iGaming in the Nordic country.

As a journalist covering the U.S. gaming industry and as a recreational gambler who both delights in playing online slots and occasionally needs to take breaks from playing online slots, I must credit the Finns for being proactive instead of reactive. And I must credit the fact that they have, for the most part, written up legitimately wise, probably effective rules.

The proposed rule that seems to be getting the most attention is the one around the speed of play. It would ban “autoplay,” ban the option to fast-forward spin animation and get straight to the result, and require that each spin take at least 2½ seconds.

Here’s how things currently work at regulated U.S. casino sites without any of these restrictions: On most games, you can select a version of the spin where the result is revealed instantly with no individual reel animations, and you can tap an option to spin up to 50 times successively. So, varying slightly by game and by your results (big wins slow things down a little and bonus rounds slow things down a lot), it’s possible, especially if you’re on a lousy run of losing spins, to plow through 50 plays in about a minute.

This is not a fun way to play slots. Quite the opposite. It sucks out almost all the thrill. But I’ve done it, specifically when sites are running promotions based on volume. I’ve absolutely gone into autoplay, fast-forward mode at the smallest denomination in pursuit of a higher spot on a leaderboard and the larger bonus that comes with it.

And I can say without hesitation that if slots are supposed to be a form of entertainment, and if responsible gambling is something we actually care about promoting, these speed-things-up options should not exist.

The Finns want to slow players down. They want to make it harder to “button mash” on tilt. They want to give every game a couple of seconds to breathe, which in turn should lead players to remember to breathe.

Could this negatively impact an online casino’s bottom line? Absolutely. Fewer spins per minute in a game that favors the house equals less profit for the operator. But it also means less problem gambling, which is better for everyone over the long haul.

Size matters

Finland’s Ministry of the Interior also wants to impose betting limits and loss limits, and this is sure to be a lot more controversial than slowing down the game play.

There are different limits depending on the age of the player. For those under 25, the maximum stake of a slot spin would be €10 (about $11.60). For those 25 and older, it’s double that amount (€20 or $23.20).

Imposing limits like this is tricky business, as the value of a dollar (or a euro) varies wildly from person to person. My typical spin size when I play online casino is 40 cents. I don’t think I’ve ever gone above $2 for a single spin.

But for some people — those who can afford to absorb larger losses — a $2 spin isn’t worth their time, nor is even a $23.20 spin. And while I may think, “Nobody should be playing a slot for $100 a spin, that’s crazy,” there are whales out there who view a $23.20 cap the same way I might view a 2-cent cap. And, yeah, if suddenly all the Pennsylvania online casinos said the maximum spin size was 2 cents, I’d probably lose interest in playing.

All that said, I think the suggested regulation out of Finland is more pro than con. It’s prudent to turn away that one customer out of every 1,000 who likes to play huge in order to protect the other 999. Operators that lose access to the sort of people who might lose $1 million in a day may not love it, but for long-term sustainability of the product, this is in everyone’s best interest.

Separately, the Ministry of the Interior wants to impose daily, monthly, and yearly loss limits, although those are specific to physical slot machines at brick-and-mortar casinos. But the same principle applies: Some players will find them extremely frustrating, while others will be saved from financial disaster.

The more you know …

There’s one additional regulation on the table that I wholly support: clear transparency about the impact — or lack thereof — of player decisions.

In blackjack, player decisions matter. In just about any table game involving cards, in fact, there are decisions to be made where certain choices have a higher expected value than others. And in some slot games, the player can make an actual calculated choice based on the situation (such as whether to pay for another spin at an elevated price in an advanced game state).

But there are also plenty of slot games that create the illusion of control, when in fact the outcome remains completely random. And the Finnish authorities want the games to contain disclosures spelling out when those outcomes are indeed random and not influenced by what button the player taps next.

This is another one that operators may not love but which benefits the ecosystem overall and makes for a more trustworthy product.

Of all the suggested Finnish online slot regulations, there’s only one that I object to: The Ministry of the Interior wants sites to send pop-up reminders every 15 minutes, letting customers know how long they’ve been playing. (This does not apply to peer-to-peer games like online poker, where interrupting concentration can impact outcomes.) In U.S. iCasino states, the standard interval for such push notifications is every 30 minutes.

Perhaps there’s a gentle, non-intrusive way to let a player know they’ve been logged on and spinning away for a while, but the operators haven’t found it yet. In my experience, the arrival of the pop-up, particularly when it blocks my view of an in-progress game, only serves to irritate me. It irritates me if I’m doing well, and it irritates me even more if I’m doing poorly. Either way, all I want to do is to get that pop-up off my screen as quickly as possible, assuredly without reading it, and get back to what I was doing.

The timed reminder is intended to interrupt tilt and encourage responsible behavior. But it has just as much potential to create tilt. And that makes it a negative if those reminders are coming twice as frequently.

Overall, though, the proposed regulations in Finland appear to be a model for how to introduce legal online casino in a responsible, sustainable way. And attaching such regulations to iGaming bills in states still attempting to legalize the activity just may make a difference in getting state legislators to sign on.

At the very least, with expansion efforts largely stalled out around the U.S. the last few years, there’s no good reason not to give an approach like this a spin.