Online slot provider BGaming has made its games “up to 90 per cent lighter and quicker to load” with the creation of an image compression algorithm. 

The algorithm, which has been nominated for Industry Innovation of the Year for the SBC Awards 2022, has been designed to “overcome troubles with players’ slow internet connection and VPN limitations”. 

Average game file size has been reduced from 16.4 megabytes to 7.3mb; the heaviest slot in the studio’s portfolio, which weighed 38mb, lost 51 per cent of its size and became “two times quicker to load”.

Yury Kuvetski, BGaming’s Front-end Lead, said: “At first glance, the automation of image compression is easy, but none of the ready-made solutions can provide optimizations without losing quality. 

“We’ve chosen the most complicated way and developed our own algorithm to satisfy all our needs and customers’ needs. We have speeded up the loading time of all our games and will continue our work in this direction to provide players with the best possible experience.”

Despite the compressions to its titles, BGaming noted that the overall user experience has not been negatively impacted.

Alexander Novitski, Game Provider Manager at N1 Partners, commented: “As many operators, we also see Africa and Latin America as promising regions, thanks to their economic dynamism and enthusiasm for online gaming. 

“However, opportunities come with a lot of challenges. For example, to join the Nigerian igaming market, an operator needs to provide the players with lightweight content, which can be quickly loaded and run. BGaming’s portfolio is now optimized to overcome these challenges and deliver high-quality entertainment regardless of the player’s location.”