The plan is to be proactive states Vasily Polynov, chief business development and communications officer at True Lab, when elaborating on the company’s strategy to move into new regulated markets.

This comes after True Lab’s recently announced deals with Yggdrasil and SoftSwiss which further enhanced the firm’s presence in new regulated markets.

As part of the latter, True Lab’s gaming suite was integrated through the Coingaming Group’s Hub88 platform and included the studio’s latest slots Sun Strike and Victoria Wild, as well as the crypto-themed Mining Factory, and alternative HTML5 games like Magic Dice, Chain’s Code, Tony’s Reel, Pirate Bay, and Robby the Illusionist. 

CasinoBeats spoke to Polynov regarding its recent deals, how the company is handling the effects of COVID-19 and its strategic plan for moving into new regulated markets. 

CasinoBeats: You’ve recently announced your new deal with Yggdrasil, how does this deal benefit the company?

Vasily Polynov: We’ve entered the YG Masters program, which will allow us to build separate games in line with Yggdrasil’s development, testing and certification infrastructure, having their independent evaluation and advice on our game concepts, and eventually distributing the game throughout their incredibly wide partner network. 

All that thanks to their GATI set of tools. For sure we’re pretty impressed with the prospects, and we’ve chosen a very promising game concept to make our premiere launch later this year.

CB: What effect has the current climate had on operations and what’s your approach to responsible gambling measures? 

VP: To be honest, our art team is a bit upset they couldn’t keep working as close as it used to be. This is more of the atmosphere inside True Lab – we are quite passionate with what we do, and the recently gained traction motivates us speeding up. 

But safety is above all now, so we feel okay in general, happy to stay on track and moving to home offices seamlessly in most aspects.

Our fellow casino Trueflip.io has faced significant audience growth, but at the same time we realize this being very temporary. Moreover, these days we should enable our best efforts to prevent any harm to our players. 

True Flip casino has released their updated user profiles just in time – really a state of art when it comes to responsible gaming features. 

CB: Last year you received your Critical Gaming Supply license by the MGA, how has this impacted operations?

VP: Our way towards a license started yet when we used to be a crypto startup. Back then we lacked trust as a new business and demanded a clear indication of our general focus on regulated markets.

Today, when the company has evolved into a normal igaming business, the license grants us a gateway to many desired markets, and is still a good sign for many potential partners. 

Right now we work with MGA on a B2C permit as well. This one is for our next big thing, namely a disruptive casino brand to add to our existing assets.

CB: You’re now able to reach more markets, what’s the strategic plan now for True Lab to maximise potential in these markets?

VP: The plan is of course being proactive. The True Lab’s partner network has been constantly growing this year, and we’re having more and more eye-catching games to offer. But this alone wouldn’t bring us the desired commercial digits.

Nowadays we consider each casino partner separately, and offer appealing promotions that would smoothly go along with their common practice. And what is most important, we take all the headache so that our beloved partners don’t waste their valuable time. 

The idea is to support these cool games with a tailored partner approach instead of annoying sales. We understand that the only way we benefit – is when our partners do.

CB: Is there a preference for working with aggregators, platform providers or directly with operators? If so can you explain why this would be your preference?

VP: We’d had some good relations with both casino owners and aggregators by the time we started marketing True Lab, and that defined the pipeline for initial integrations. Now we have a huge list of commits, and some integrations in-process. 

Of course, we are happy to integrate directly, as this makes a better use of our in-game promo tools. But the platforms/aggregation deals that True Lab partakes have already shortened time to many markets. 

So it’s fair to say we are completely open to various distribution options. Eventually there are yet lots of “must-integrate” deals that we would follow, and that’s a big story itself.

CB: What are your plans to reach out further afield into more regulated markets?

VP: Of course, we started examining more prospects right after finalising the MGA-related works. 

At the same time we’re a relatively small studio with its quickly growing needs. That means we should carefully estimate all prospects of any new challenge we face. Therefore we haven’t yet come up with the choice of a next license. 

Though a certain short list is already present, with our legal office and advisors now considering the best option. Still we believe that the MGA permit is quite enough for this year.