One of the big names in the German street market has hit back at an attack by a leader of the German casinos.

Two week ago in an interview with InterGame’s sister publication, InterGaming, the specialist casino magazine, Matthias Hein, CEO of casino-owning Speilbank SH, criticised the street market in AWP machines.

Hein was asked what is the biggest challenge facing land-based casinos in Germany? He replied: "Challenge number one is to curb the arcade business from further expanding its business with typical casino games of chance. The aim is not a ‘level playing field’ in terms of player protection, but a legal cut-back to the very origin of AWP as ‘amusement without prizes’.

But Michael Gauselmann, a member of the main board at the Gauselmann Group, Germany’s biggest AWP company both as a manufacturer and operator, responded to InterGame: "In the early days of German casinos they had live games only, no slots. Then they introduced slots and for many years they were totally different from German AWPs in terms of stakes, prizes, look and feel. In the past couple of years they have, step-by-step, reduced the stakes and prizes on slots and as a result the slots have become more like an AWP.

"The question is whether this was intended by the lawmakers who allowed land-based casinos decades ago. As far as I understand the motivation, it was to offer gambling products in a restricted number of casinos to avoid illegal gaming. With the slots of today, they offer a product which doesn’t address high rollers but players who play for fun and a chance of a small prize - exactly what our AWPs do. It is not a question of banning AWPs, but of banning AWP-like slots in casinos."

Gauselmann also picked up on Hein’s reference to the origins of ‘AWP’ as ‘amusement without prizes’. "It is strange that someone from the land-based casino industry really thinks that ‘AWP’ stands for Amusement Without Prizes when everyone knows that the original term was Amusement WITH Prizes."