3 August 2022: GameArt announced that PASTÓN.es, a Spanish online casino and bookmaker, had launched sixteen of the studio's slots for its players in Spain.
The press release names six titles (El Toreo, Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2, African Sunset, Thunder Bird and Crystal Mystery). It also presents a bigger slot collection as one of PASTÓN's strategic goals for the year.
Jorge Guerrero, CEO of PASTÓN, praises very high RTPs without giving a single figure, and the text names no licence and no regulator.
Operator: Euroapuestas Online, SAU has held the Spanish general licences for Apuestas and Otros Juegos since 2 June 2015, and they were extended on 6 February 2025. Its only domain declared to the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ) is paston.es.
Slot licence: provisional grant on 8 June 2017 (reference MAZ/2017/041), technical system approval on 16 November 2017 and renewal on 21 March 2022, a little over four months before the GameArt games arrived.
Sixteen is also the number of games GameArt listed as certified for Spain in September 2022, a fraction of the provider's full portfolio, which GameArt now puts at more than 130 slots.
PASTÓN was not the studio's first Spanish casino, since GameArt had already announced the same six headline titles at CasinoBarcelona.es in July 2021.
RTP: the three official game sheets still online (Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2, African Sunset) list 96%, with medium volatility for the first two and low volatility for the third.
Spanish rules: every game must show its theoretical return and its actual return over the last six months. Time and spending are capped before each session, autoplay stops at 100 spins and each game round lasts at least 3 seconds (Orden HAP/1370/2014).
Twenty-four hours later, the deal with Wikibet promised every slot in the studio's catalogue, with fiat and crypto stakes, a world away from PASTÓN's approved selection.
Outside Spain: a DGOJ licence only covers gambling offered in Spain, so PASTÓN's licence says nothing about any other market.
On 3 August 2022, GameArt announced that sixteen of its slot games were going live at PASTÓN.es, a Spanish casino and sports betting brand. The announcement read like a wedding invitation: a date, two quotes, six titles on display and not a single supporting document. Four years on, I went back to it with what anyone can check without opening an account, which I never do. That means the register of the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), the game sheets on the provider's website, its list of titles certified for Spain and the Spanish slot regulations. Together, they say more about the Spanish market than the press release itself. The first lesson sits in the brand name. In the colloquial Spanish spoken in Spain, a pastón is a large sum of money, a promise that makes anyone who understands slot maths smile.
What did the PASTÓN and GameArt announcement of 3 August 2022 say?
On 3 August 2022, GameArt said that PASTÓN was launching sixteen of its slots. Six of them were named: El Toreo, Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2, African Sunset, Thunder Bird and Crystal Mystery. The text published on the studio's website frames the deal as a fair exchange. PASTÓN gets to expand its slot collection, one of its strategic goals for the year according to the release. The provider says it has done everything required for its games to be playable in Spain. In return, it gains one more outlet in a regulated market, with titles billed as its best performers.
Two voices follow. Jorge Guerrero, CEO of PASTÓN, praises HTML5 games across many themes and “very high RTPs”, which in his view appeal to the most experienced players. Alen Šutić, Regional Sales Manager at GameArt, says he is proud to see a reputable online casino distribute the studio's games. He also looks forward to Spanish players getting their hands on them. The release ends with the promise of an open-ended collaboration and a Spanish line-up set to grow.
What is missing matters as much as what is there. No return rate is given, even though RTP is the bookmaker's only argument. No licence, no regulator and no company name appear. The description of PASTÓN sticks to what it calls strong growth and a claim of more than 200,000 players. Read in 2026, the text looks like most of the dissected press releases on this blog, which tell you who is teaming up with whom and almost never on what terms. The rest has to be found elsewhere, and Spain has the rare virtue of publishing almost everything.
Who operates PASTÓN in Spain?
PASTÓN is operated by Euroapuestas Online, SAU, a company listed in the DGOJ register since its two general licences were granted on 2 June 2015. The 2022 press release left that name out. The regulator's file, on the other hand, reads like the registration papers of a used car. It tells you who owns the vehicle, how long it has been on the road and which roads it is allowed to use.
Euroapuestas Online's entry in the Spanish register
The entry for Euroapuestas Online, SAU declares a single domain, paston.es, and brings together two families of licences. The general licences, Apuestas for betting and Otros Juegos for casino games, were extended on 6 February 2025. The technical system behind them received a second approval on 27 October 2025, as shown in the operator's entry in the DGOJ register. Then come the singular licences, one per game type: fixed-odds sports betting, other fixed-odds betting, roulette, blackjack and slots. The page also records the operator's membership of the DGOJ's Phishing Alert anti-phishing service and its authorisation to advertise.
The licence that matters for GameArt: máquinas de azar
The singular licence for máquinas de azar was granted provisionally to Euroapuestas Online, SAU on 8 June 2017 under reference MAZ/2017/041. Máquinas de azar is the legal Spanish term for what everyday Spanish calls tragaperras. The approval resolution of 16 November 2017 validated the related technical system, based on certification reports from an entity designated by the DGOJ. The licence was then renewed on 21 March 2022. When the sixteen GameArt games reached PASTÓN in early August, that green light was a little over four months old. For a slot provider, it is the only line on the record that really counts: without it, none of its titles could have run on paston.es.
The blind spots of a licence register
The DGOJ register proves a right to operate, not what sits in a lobby. It lists neither a brand's game providers, nor its players, nor its revenue. The 200,000 players in the press release therefore remain PASTÓN's own claim. Whether a studio is present in a lobby is something you check at the casino, not with the regulator. Keeping this in mind avoids a stubborn misconception, which treats a licence as a certificate for every game on offer. A licence covers the framework, and the list of titles needs a separate check.
Why sixteen slots rather than 130?
On 12 September 2022, six weeks after the PASTÓN announcement, GameArt presented sixteen of its games as certified for the Spanish market. The provider now claims more than 130 slots. The gap comes down to Spanish law, which requires operators to use software and systems that are “debidamente homologados”, in other words duly approved. A studio does not sell its whole catalogue in Spain, only the share it has had certified for that market. On the provider's side, the consequence is spelled out on GameArt's Spain page, which files its titles under the heading “certified for Spain”.
The September 2022 list came out just before SBC Summit Barcelona 2022 (20 to 22 September, stand M3). It presented these sixteen titles as some of the studio's most popular certified games, and all six of PASTÓN's headline titles are on it. Sixteen games at PASTÓN, sixteen on the studio's Spanish list: the match suggests the casino took most, if not all, of what was approved at the time. I stay cautious on this point, because PASTÓN's press release only names six of its sixteen titles.
GameArt already had a foot in Spain before PASTÓN. In July 2021, the studio announced up to sixteen slots for CasinoBarcelona.es, the online brand of the Peralada group. Its list already included El Toreo, Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2, African Sunset, ThunderBird and Crystal Mystery. A year apart, two Spanish casinos drew from the same small pool, like two bookshops limited to the books that have already been translated.
List
Date
Titles announced
PASTÓN's six headline titles included
CasinoBarcelona.es (GameArt press release)
15 July 2021
up to 16
6 out of 6
PASTÓN (GameArt press release)
3 August 2022
16, 6 of them named
6 out of 6
Games certified for Spain (SBC Summit Barcelona 2022 press release)
12 September 2022
16 listed
6 out of 6
Studio's Spain page
checked on 29 October 2026
32
6 out of 6
What RTP do PASTÓN's GameArt slots offer?
Three of the six titles named in 2022 still have a game sheet on GameArt's website as of 29 October 2026, and all three show the same RTP: 96%. The Tiger Heart game sheet displays a single value, like its two neighbours. RTP, short for return to player, measures the share of stakes a game pays back on average over a very large number of spins. At 96%, the casino keeps €4 out of every €100 wagered, in theory. It is a marathon runner's average: it gives you the finishing time and nothing about the pace of the first kilometre. An evening in front of the reels is not a very large number of spins, and the result can stray from that rate in either direction.
Title
Release
Layout
RTP
Volatility
What drives the game
Tiger Heart
28 April 2017
5 reels, 10 paylines
96%
Medium
8, 10 or 15 free spins (150 at most), wins doubled during the bonus, card gamble feature
Money Farm 2
12 April 2017
5 reels, 25 paylines
96%
Medium
12 free spins on two reel sets, up to four reel sets and three wild reels depending on the golden eggs collected
African Sunset
2 June 2015
5 reels, 15 paylines
96%
Low
15 free spins, x2, x3, x5 or x10 multipliers, gamble on the colour of a card
At equal RTP, volatility changes the game. African Sunset, rated low by its provider, spreads its wins into small, frequent amounts. Tiger Heart and Money Farm 2, rated medium, space their wins out to make them bigger. I drew a volatility lesson across five slots from the same studio in an article about a demo platform, and the principle applies here unchanged. As for the very high rates the bookmaker boasted about, these three sheets bring them down to an honest 96% for every title. A decent figure, not a selling point.
The most original mechanic of the trio belongs to the farm game. The Money Farm 2 game sheet describes twelve free spins that start on two reel sets played at the same time. Each golden egg collected then brings a third reel set closer, then a fourth, along with reels that turn wild across every set at once. The bonus grows as you play it, but it cannot be retriggered during the free spins.
The figure Spanish law requires casinos to display
Article 8 of Orden HAP/1370/2014 requires every Spanish operator to publish the “expectativa matemática de retorno” of each slot. This expected return is calculated over one year. Operators must also publish the actual percentage of winnings paid out on amounts wagered, for each of the previous six months. The text, published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado on 30 July 2014, excludes jackpot wins from that calculation. For a PASTÓN player, the difference is significant. The RTP on the game sheet says what the game should pay back, while the actual return says what it has paid back at that particular casino. If you play in Spain, open the game rules at the operator before taking a CEO at his word, and compare the two figures.
Six Spanish safeguards in front of a slot
Since Orden HAP/1370/2014 of 25 July 2014, an online slot in Spain only starts once session limits for time and spending have been set. The rule applies to every DGOJ licence holder, and therefore to PASTÓN's GameArt titles. It produces a very different screen from the ones found in less regulated markets. Like a taxi meter, it reminds you at regular intervals how much time has passed and how much money has gone.
Session: maximum time and amount set explicitly before every session, with no default values and nothing carried over from the previous session, then locked until the end. Once the current round is over, the session closes by itself when a limit is reached, and the operator must warn the player as the limit approaches.
Reminders: the player chooses how often time and spending alerts appear, with a minimum interval of fifteen minutes.
Quick return: reopening a session less than 60 minutes after the previous one first triggers a responsible gambling warning, with a link to the operator's prevention measures.
Autoplay: 100 spins at most, with the option to stop at any time.
Pace: each game round lasts at least 3 seconds.
Jackpots: only progressive jackpots funded by players' stakes are allowed, and guaranteed jackpots are banned.
The Orden mainly regulates how people play: it lets the casino set the minimum and maximum stakes and puts no cap on winnings. These safeguards also stop at the border. Spain's 2011 gambling act governs gambling offered at state level in Spain. A DGOJ licence, PASTÓN's included, therefore says nothing about any other country, where the local regulator sets the rules.
A rule enforced on the record
In December 2024, the DGOJ found slots on dafabet.es that could be set to more than 100 autoplay spins, in breach of article 14 of the Orden. According to the reply from the operator, Eurasia Solutions, PLC, 188 games from a single provider identified as MGA were affected. That provider has nothing to do with the Maltese regulator of the same initials. The case file ES 2025/016 classifies it as a serious infringement and sets the fine at €100,000, reduced to €60,000 after the operator acknowledged responsibility and paid voluntarily. The case does not involve GameArt. Still, the story of this operator sanctioned in Spain, which I covered in another article, shows that a studio's settings become the responsibility of the casino that runs its games.
PASTÓN and Wikibet: two announcements twenty-four hours apart
GameArt published its deal with Wikibet on 4 August 2022, twenty-four hours after the PASTÓN one, and the two texts promise very different things. Side by side, they show the gap between a launch in a regulated national market and distribution promised to the whole world. Think of two menus from the same chef: one built from a single country's list, the other offered as all-you-can-eat.
PASTÓN
Wikibet
Press release date
3 August 2022
4 August 2022
Games announced
16 slots, 6 of them named
every slot in the studio's catalogue, no number given
Timing
already live
coming soon, no date
Target audience
players in Spain
players worldwide
Stakes
not specified
fiat currency and cryptocurrency
Technology partner
not specified
Quantum Gaming
Licence mentioned
none
none
GameArt spokesperson
Alen Šutić, Regional Sales Manager
Nevena Aleksieva, Head of Sales
The difference in volume has nothing to do with the two casinos' appetites. At PASTÓN, only the approved part of the catalogue could get in, while the promise made to Wikibet was not bound by any such border. Neither text mentions a licence, so it is up to the reader to look for one in the register of the country where the brand says it operates. The wider an announcement's promise, the more urgent that check becomes.
What is left of the PASTÓN GameArt deal in 2026?
As of 29 October 2026, GameArt's Spain page lists 32 certified titles for that market, twice the sixteen of 2022, and PASTÓN's six headline titles are still among them. The page, built for SBC Summit Barcelona 2023, is still online. Its list mixes fruit machines, Money Farm spin-offs and Megaways titles. On this point, the provider has kept its promise of a growing Spanish range.
Three of the six headline titles have lost their public game sheet, though. El Toreo, Thunder Bird and Crystal Mystery appear on the Spanish list without a description page on the studio's website, whereas Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2 and African Sunset keep theirs. The detail matters to players, because a provider's game sheet is one of the few documents that give RTP and volatility without going through a casino. For these three titles, the numbers have to be found in the operator's game rules and in its actual return over the last six months.
On the casino side, the DGOJ database shows general licences extended in February 2025 and a technical system approved for the second time in October 2025: PASTÓN is still operating in Spain. What I take from this deal, four years on, is less the number sixteen than what it says about the market. A Spanish lobby fills up at the pace of certifications, not wishes. A studio moves forward title by title, the way you stock a wine cellar: slowly, with old vintages kept for years. Games released in 2015 and 2017 are still on the list.
FAQs:
Which GameArt games did PASTÓN launch in 2022?
Sixteen slots, only six of which were named by GameArt: El Toreo, Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2, African Sunset, Thunder Bird and Crystal Mystery. The announcement does not list the other ten.
Is PASTÓN a legal online casino in Spain?
Yes. Its operator has held two DGOJ general licences since June 2015 and a singular slot licence since June 2017, renewed in March 2022.
Which company is behind PASTÓN?
Euroapuestas Online, SAU, listed in the Spanish register with a single domain, paston.es. In 2022, Jorge Guerrero was its CEO according to GameArt's press release.
What is the RTP of Tiger Heart, Money Farm 2 and African Sunset?
Their official game sheets give 96% for each. In terms of volatility, Tiger Heart and Money Farm 2 are rated medium and African Sunset low.
Where can I find the RTP of El Toreo, Thunder Bird or Crystal Mystery?
These three titles no longer have a public game sheet on GameArt's website as of 29 October 2026. In Spain, the game rules published by the operator must show the theoretical return and the actual return over the last six months.
How many GameArt slots are certified for Spain?
Sixteen titles were listed in September 2022, and the studio's Spain page now shows 32, out of more than 130 slots claimed in total.
How many autoplay spins are allowed on a slot in Spain?
A maximum of 100, and players can leave autoplay at any time. The law also sets a minimum of 3 seconds per game round.
Can players outside Spain use PASTÓN?
PASTÓN's licences are Spanish licences, granted by the DGOJ for gambling offered in Spain. They say nothing about any other country, where the local regulator decides what is legal.
What does the name PASTÓN mean?
It is the augmentative of pasta, according to the Real Academia Española dictionary, which lists it as a colloquial word used in Spain for a large amount of money.
Is the partnership between PASTÓN and GameArt still active?
GameArt announced it in 2022 as an open-ended collaboration. As of 29 October 2026, PASTÓN's licences are still listed in the DGOJ register and the six titles from the deal still appear on GameArt's Spanish list.
