Trade group adds, loses members

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | 10:41 a.m.

The Gaming Standards Association, an international trade group of about 60 major slot machine makers and related companies, has added seven new members as well as lost several members. The group this year developed a "tool kit" and a technology protocol aimed at creating standardized equipment to run slot machines and other back-end technology in the casino industry.

The new members include Intralot S.A. of Athens, Greece, Kare Technology of Moscow, Nick Farley & Associates of Ohio, NRT Technology Corp. of Toronto, Revive Partners LLC of Las Vegas, SCG-Link Corp. of Edmonton, Alberta, and Video Gaming Technologies Inc. of South Carolina.

Revive Partners is a subsidiary company of Mandalay Resort Group that aims to retrofit the casino giant's slot machine equipment so that the slots are capable of running more sophisticated software. Mandalay executive Gregg Solomon is board chairman of the GSA. The company received approval from Nevada regulators last month to operate as a slot machine manufacturer and distributor.

The new members joined because the association is "producing results," GSA President Peter DeRaedt said.

Several other members have left the group over the past year. They include Boyd Gaming Corp. of Las Vegas, Cirsa Interactive Terrassa of Spain, Enisco of Slovenia, Octavian International Ltd. of England, Sigma Game Inc. of Las Vegas and Soanar Croydon of Australia.

A handful of these companies left the group because of a patent policy that was installed about a year ago, DeRaedt said. Some companies -- including International Game Technology, which left the GSA in July -- viewed the policy as too limiting because it requires companies to disclose pertinent patent information to competitors as part of the process of creating an industrywide technology standard. Now, many companies are creating different back-office systems that don't communicate with one another.

Some companies left for reasons other than the patent policy, including management changes as well as financial difficulties, DeRaedt said.

The GSA in April created a new class of membership to allow companies to become members without complying with the group's patent policy.