Casino Venetian: a rogue casino operating with a fake license and pirated games. Slow payment and bad customer service. We do not recommend this casino!
To anyone passionate about casinos and gambling, Casino Venetian represents a household name. The casino resembles the city of Venice and its squares divided by numerous canals. They offer all the luxury and splendor of the Las Vegas Strip, making their customers feel like they are in a James Bond movie.
However, this online casino couldn’t be further away from its Las Vegas counterpart. Apart from the name, there’s no other connection between the two casinos. This just seems like inviting legal trouble for no reason.
Casino Venetian opened up in 2016 and has already managed to find itself on the list of blacklisted casinos. It operates with pirated software and a fake license, making them a prime example of what a rogue casino looks like.
First Impression
The website design is not one of the greatest you’ll come across. It’s a bit blocky, and they’ve also used pictures of the actual Las Vegas casino, which is more than misleading. Also, the dominant color is gray — an extremely exciting and pleasing shade to anyone who is yet to see any other color in the world.
Beauties on the side, we can safely say they have a functional website, with a decent navigational system. The games are easily accessible from the homepage, as well as the FAQ and the terms and conditions sections. Although, it’s worth noting here that their FAQ section is pretty useless. It just offers you links to the T&Cs, About us, and Policy pages.
Furthermore, they offer versions of the website in 8 different languages, which don’t seem to be separated properly. For example, when you enter the promotions page on the English version, the title will be in Italian for some reason.
Also, when it comes to making deposits, users can do that in 6 different currencies. However, none of them is the US dollar, as this casino is restricted in this country. Although, worryingly, you can still sign up if you select the USA as your place of residence. What is more, when making a deposit, you can use the services of MasterCard and Visa credit cards, as well as Neteller, Skrill, and Paysafecard. All of these options are also available for withdrawals.
The company that owns the Casino Venetian is Sprocess Online Limited and seemingly, it is their only active casino.
Games and Software
This casino lists Play Pearls and Art of Games as their software providers and their assortment of games is fairly poor. You can play around 200 games on the desktop version of the site. On the other hand, they offer a mobile version with even fewer games on offer. Moreover, you can play all of these games for fun. But if you want to play with real money, you have to create an account.
As is the case with pretty much every casino around, the slots category give you the biggest variety of games. You can play titles like Asgard’s Gold, Aztec Treasure, and Freya.
There are also a few table games such as Baccarat, Blackjack, and Roulette. The last one also has a live version, where players can compete against each other. Additionally, you can enjoy several video poker and specialty games, including Keno, Jacks or Better, and Double Down Stud. But that is pretty much where the fun stops.
Aside from the aforementioned Play Pearls and Art of Games, they have also implemented casino games from Novomatic. This should be great news for the players since Novomatic represents a renowned provider in the online gambling community. After all, they’ve made a name for themselves by creating a plethora of well-designed and proven games.
However, in this instance, it’s bad news. They have chosen to run a pirated version of this provider’s games. Piracy in itself is a crime, but this is not where the problems stop. Favoring pirated versions over official releases allows casinos to alter the code behind the games. For example, they can drastically lower the RTP of those games, making it pretty much impossible for players to come out on top.
Additionally, they can promise players amazing winnings and a life of a sultan if they manage to hit the jackpot. And there are a lot of players who play these slots with the sole purpose of hunting down that jackpot. However, when it comes to games with pirated software, the casino can simply remove that random jackpot from the game if they wanted to. So you might end up thinking that maybe that next spin would be the winning one, not even knowing that the jackpot has been completely removed from the game’s code in the first place.
License
The casino states that they operate under the jurisdiction of the country of Curaçao. Curaçao’s regulatory body is one the more laid-back governing bodies when it comes to imposing rules on their licensees. Whereas they still might be better than a few others, this licensing body doesn’t regulate casinos’ business practices as strictly. Also, they rarely mediate in disputes between players and casinos.
However, we can say with a great deal of certainty that the Venetian Casino operates under a fake license. The information provided concerning the licensing number deviates from the usual pattern and sequences Curaçao’s licenses have. Additionally, there’s no official seal on the website, and they provide no link to the Curaçao commission’s website. Yet another reason why review sites don’t cite them as one the recommended casinos.
Bonuses
Many casino operators update their Promotions page monthly, or even (bi)weekly, offering players different bonuses. This doesn’t seem to be the case in this instance. Their page with promotions only states two bonuses.
Firstly, there’s a welcome bonus of 200% match of your first deposit that goes up to €2000. However, as you might expect, the wagering requirements behind this bonus are incredibly steep. You have to meet the condition of 35x bonus plus deposit. This translates to the player having to complete a playthrough of 35 times the amount of bonus and deposit combined before being able to make any withdrawal. On top of that, in some countries, the wagering requirements grow to 200x bonus and deposit, which is straight-out insane.
Secondly, they also offer a promotion called Refer a Friend. This way, if you’ve influenced another player to join the casino, they will reward you with a €30 addition to your balance.
User Experience
A lot of the players faced an issue regarding withdrawal limits. At first, you might view the maximum monthly withdrawal limit of 999,999 AUD as a good sign. However, they’ve conditioned their non-VIP players by not allowing them to cash out more than 10x their initial deposit. Basically, if you put in the minimum deposit of $25, you won’t be able to ask for a payment larger than $250. This clearly favors high-rolling players, while others struggle when it comes to making a significant profit.
Another issue players have stumbled upon is the smoothness with which the games run. Games tend to freeze and force you to refresh the page. And once you do that, all of the winnings and free spins (if you had any) disappear. This has happened way too often to be just a one-time bug.
What is more, the casino offers customer support which you can contact via e-mail or live chat, which, however, is not available 24/7. Moreover, they’ve also recently added a phone number for you to call them up. Since this is a relatively new casino, there aren’t plenty of complaints to be found. Nonetheless, those that are around depict very poor customer service.
Customers complain that they have to wait for long once they contact the support and are often left without a reply. And as you probably know, when making a withdrawal, you have to upload a copy of your ID before the casino authorizes the transaction. In addition, many players witnessed a complete break in communication once they provided the required documentation, and the casino ultimately denied them their winnings.
And finally, they have a 24-hour pending time and claim the cashout time to be around 2–5 business days (no weekend withdrawals). However, all the other facts stated suggest they don’t always stay true to these claims.
Pros and Cons
They have a nice name. That’s pretty much the only advantage of this casino if we disregard the fact that they copied it off someone else. Also, they have a rather poor software selection which caps at 200 games. Additionally, they also use a pirated version of Novomatic, which is a huge no-no.
Moreover, they have terrible customer support, which blatantly ignores users. On top of it all, their license is fake and their withdrawal limits are a nuisance to low-rolling players.
Our Verdict
Venetian Casino clearly rushed their way into becoming one of the better-known rogue casinos out there. Using pirated games and lacking a license are clear signs they’re trying to con their players every step of the way.
Even though they’ve only been members of the online gambling scene for a short while, it was still enough for them to get blacklisted, and we suggest everyone avoids playing there.
Casino Rating
Complaint Resolution: 1/10
Cashout Time: 4/10
Software: 1/10
Jurisdiction: 1/10
Overall score: 1,5/10