Poker machines at Star Entertainment Group’s casinos in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and Sydney are back online following an incident during a planned systems upgrade that caused them to go offline over the weekend.
The machines at the Treasury Casino, The Star Gold Coast and Star Sydney went offline around 10pm on Saturday during system upgrades.
The costly Star Entertainment pokies outage happened because the company was upgrading the software used “in readiness for the introduction of cashless gaming.”
Star Entertainment released a press release via the Australian Stock Exchange saying the poker machines were now all back online.
“As previously announced, the decision to turn off all [electronic gaming machines] and [electronic table games] was to ensure compliance with relevant regulations, and to maintain the company’s commitment to safer gambling procedures,” The press release said.
There is a growing push across Australia for poker machines to be fully digital, meaning you will only be able to fund your playing via a membership card or an app.
Proponents of the cashless gaming proposals say it will make it easier to enforce spending limits and identify problem gamblers.
Opponents of cashless gaming believe it is targeting minorities and is government overreach.