Skywind

About the Company

Skywind Group is a real money online casino and social games developer with headquarters in Douglas, Isle of Man. The company has development labs and offices employing about 250 people located in Minsk, Belarus; Riga, Latvia; Nicosia, Cyprus; Kiev, Ukraine, and Sydney, Australia. Skywind Holdings Limited is registered in Road Town, British Virgin Islands.

Like many of the companies created or later acquired by Playtech founder, Tedi Sagi, there is no information available about the company prior to Sagi's attempt to sell it to Playtech in 2012. That sale was eventually adjusted to become a licensing deal "in perpetuity" giving the founder 20% of social earnings and $500,000 per month in fees.

The agreement was heralded as the larger company's entry into social gaming, but it also included real money casino software which was licensed to several other operators in 2014 including Mansion, Gala Coral, and Winner along with five other companies.

Today the group operates as a privately held tech company offering a variety of products and services to the online gaming industry. The company states that the backbone of its offering is a "state of the art user behavioral deep learning engine".

Software and Games

Component parts include a Global Management System (GMS) that includes POS/Retail, VR/AR, real, social, and arcade gaming platforms; white label and affiliate services; content and payment provider modules, and a multi-tiered distribution network that runs through resellers, operators, agents, and sub-agents. The same architecture can be tweaked to service B2B or B2C customers.

The Falcon gaming platform can be married to a clients homegrown management tools or the GMS and can handle up to 100,000 bets per second. It can be stand-alone or integrated and has built-in connectors for all major content providers. The 'deep learning behavioral engine' (AI) is used by Falcon to help operators engage users in real-time with onscreen marketing, in-game promotions, and multi-channel sales.

The Virtual Studio allows operators to create unique games in an HTML5-friendly format that can be launched on Falcon from concept to delivery in a matter of weeks.

PAYMAXS is a solution for lotteries and bookmakers which blends the digital space with the real world. One element that can be used is augmented reality (AR) for physical scratch tickets. When a smartphone is held over the ticket the display can become animated, offer win celebrations, second chances, and more in a 3D interactive environment intended to convert retail players to digital. Social media integration is included.

All of the company's products are reportedly 100% retail compatible including player registration at land-based kiosks and integration with Bar Code/QR Readers.

One casino we find a good variety of their games at is SlotsMillion. Casino-X and Fun88 also seem to carry some of the games. Shen Long Bao Shi has an Asian theme. The five-reel, ten-line game pays left to right and right to left. Respins with locked wild reels, stacked symbols, and expanding wilds along with a colorful theme and vibrant soundtrack make the game attractive to many players with low and high stakes possible.

Fu Fish is a jackpot slot with a top payout of 888x total stake for a winning spin. Multipliers, exploding bombs, as well as English and Asian characters give the game wide appeal. Players choose their bet range before entering the game. There are no spinning reels, rather you shoot at various sea creatures to win awards. The big golden sea dragon might seem like an easy target to hit as it covers most of the screen, but count on lots of pesky little fish getting in your way - and watch out for the bombs!

Golden Garden is a 25 pay line spinning slot with stacked symbols, extra spins, respins and more. Winning spins award respins with all winning symbols, including wilds locked in place until no more wins are achieved. Three or four scatters award a respin with scatters locked in place. Five scatters trigger free games. With respins players can lock in up to 15 scatters for 100 free games. Free spins can retrigger indefinitely. The most exciting element is that when scatters are locked they will remain as long as new winning combinations are formed, giving players more chances to land scatters and trigger free games.

The Final Analysis

Far from being a boutique development lab with a few talented industry veterans behind it, Skywind offers a complete casino solution from platform to management system and from white labels to simple API integration of their games.

SlotsMillion offers over 50 of their games. You could also try your favorite Playtech site to see if they carry them.

External Links

Official Facebook
Corporate Youtube Video