Dutch regulator orders Endorphina to stop supplying illegal sites

The Kansspelautoriteit, the Dutch gambling regulator, has issued a binding instruction against slot developer Endorphina, covering its Maltese and Cypriot entities.

The regulator found that Endorphina had not taken adequate steps to prevent its games appearing on websites that are illegal under Dutch law, in breach of Article 1(1)(b) of the Betting and Gaming Act, the Wet op de kansspelen. That failure, the Ksa said, amounted to promoting unlicensed gambling.

The Ksa had flagged its intention to act in July and again in September, before issuing the formal instruction. It also published a separate decision authorising disclosure of the order, dated the same day as the instruction itself.

Inspectors using Dutch IP addresses identified Endorphina titles on illegal sites between January and February. A follow-up check in June found the games live on 19 separate websites.

Endorphina has said it tightened its distribution agreements and introduced preventive restrictions in July 2026. According to the Ksa's findings, those measures did not solve the problem. Across January to September, the games turned up on at least 28 different unlicensed sites, as first reported by NEXT.io.

Endorphina disputes the regulator's conclusion. The company maintains it is purely a B2B supplier that does not offer gambling to players directly, and argues there is no evidence it knowingly supplied illegal operators.

It has also argued that its Maltese entity, which serves the licensed Dutch market, should fall outside the scope of the instruction. The Ksa rejected that distinction, ruling that the separation between Endorphina's corporate entities was not material to where its games were actually playable.

The action against Endorphina follows closely on a separate Ksa enforcement move against an operator. On 22 October 2026, three days after the date of the Endorphina decision, the regulator fined EOD Code SRL a record €37 million for offering illegal gambling in the Netherlands through sites including Instantcasino and Skyhills.

Where that penalty targeted the operator side of the black market, the Endorphina instruction targets the content supplying it. In the UK, the Gambling Commission has separately reached a settlement with Evolution over the supply of games to unlicensed sites.

Taken together, the two Dutch cases and the UK settlement suggest regulators are widening scrutiny beyond the operators that take bets from players to the suppliers whose games end up on illicit platforms.

For B2B suppliers operating across regulated European markets, the Ksa's reasoning carries a clear implication: holding a licence in one jurisdiction does not insulate a group if its content surfaces on unlicensed sites elsewhere. Distribution contracts and downstream monitoring of where games are hosted are now treated as part of the compliance obligation itself.

Endorphina has six weeks from the decision to lodge an objection. Filing one will not suspend its duty to comply with the instruction in the meantime.