It’s been a very long time coming, but this far it seemed almost unlikely that the Marvel slots would indeed be removed.
Disney doesn’t want gambling link
Once upon a time Disney acquired Marvel. And when that happened the family-friendly company had to look into all the existing licensing agreements for branded products. Playtech has had the licensing rights for video slots for a long time and since the release of the Marvel movies, the demand has been soaring.
The Marvel suite has been hugely successful, surely in part owed to the fact that the slots are linked in a progressive jackpot that regularly results in high 6-figure and even 7-figure wins.
In 2013, then, it was announced that Disney would discontinue the licensing for video slots. The existing licenses would be allowed to end in their own due time, which meant that for the following three years players were still able to keep playing Marvel slots.
The Age of Gods suits comes in
Preparing for the inevitable loss of the Marvel games, Playtech then began to work on replacements. In May last year a number of Age of Gods slots were released, taking their theme from Greek mythology. No licensing issues here.
Planning the replacement of the Marvel suite, the games were linked into the same progressive jackpot as well. The game engine largely remained the same for most slots, resulting in nearly 1:1 replacements that look like this:
- Iron Man 2 – Age of the Gods: King of Olympus
- The Incredible Hulk – Age of the Gods Prince of Olympus
- Fantastic Four – Age of the Gods Furious Four
- The Avengers – Age of the Gods
- Elektra – Age of the Gods Goddess of Wisdom
Of course, this is only a sample, there are many more slots for both suites.
Final removal of Marvel slots
We’ve been expecting the Marvel slots to disappear since the beginning of the year, but thus far Playtech still had them live at all their casinos. Now, in a rather sudden announcement, it’s been reported that all Marvel slots will be removed from all Playtech casinos by the 31st of March. That leaves precisely the next four days for players to enjoy the games one last time.
After that they’ll be gone.
Thankfully now there are a ton of new DC slots, which means we still get our superhero fill.