An upcoming change to Google’s Play Store policies will allow gambling and betting Android apps that use real money in 15 more countries, including Colombia.
The new rules will be applied starting on March 1st, and they’ll permit gambling apps in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. Each country will have its own limitations on the legal online gambling framework, as some of the mentioned countries as Colombia allows online casinos, sports betting, lotteries, and daily fantasy sports, but some other are more restrictive.
The restrictions are also complicated. Most countries only allow lotteries if they’re run by the government, but some, like the UK, don’t have that restriction. And as is often the case, what’s allowed in the US varies on a state-by-state basis.
Anyone looking to release a gambling app will have to do their legal homework first, considering the patchwork of laws and regulations permitting specific types of online gambling in Colombia, the interested actor most have the approval of Coljuegos by receiving the license.
The change won’t be opening the floodgates for just anyone to release a slot machine app. Currently, Google requires developers to go through an application process to get their gambling apps on the Play Store, and the new policies won’t be removing that requirement. The application ensures that the developer uploading the app is licensed to run a gambling operation in the country where the app will be sold.
Before this change, users who wanted to use gambling apps on their Android phones would have to sideload them, a practice that Google has been discouraging more and more as time goes on. iPhone users, on the other hand, have been allowed to download them straight from the App Store.
In the Play Store today already include gambling mechanics (any game that includes loot boxes). The apps that will be allowed under this policy differ in that they’ll be allowing apps that are purely made for gambling, using real money.
This comes after many other countries has gone directly to the court with the big tech company, reason why they have started to dismiss the legal gap in this discussion specially in Latam, where online gambling has been boosted by the lockdown last year and during 2021 many countries will be started to work on their legal framework, which basically means more restrictions on online gambling.
To be more specific, Coljuegos has reveal that this year one of their main focus is closed at least four thousand sites of illegal gambling including apps during the 2021.
