Best NetEnt Casinos in Canada 2024

Internet gambling originated in the mid-1990s with the emergence of the first online casinos. A vacant place never remains unoccupied and a few development companies began to peep. One of them was NetEnt, founded in 1996. Its games captured the attention of gamblers in the mid-2005, and its development efforts began to be acknowledged by professional bodies in 2010. EGR B2B Awards, EGR Innovation in RNG Casino Software, and IGA Innovator of the Year are just a few of the many. The best NetEnt casino games are now present in almost every online casino.

In 2020, Evolution and Net Entertainment concluded a contract, pursuant to which the former acquired NetEnt’s assets, including its complete game catalogue. The cost of the contract was about €1.8 billion, which made it a record-breaking deal in the gambling industry. The merger of the two behemoths has reshaped the gambling architecture and led to a synergistic effect, enriching the portfolio of Evolution in a lot of ways.

That unexpected transaction made Evolution a slot-providing company in addition to its traditional live dealer business. Besides the increased profits due to a brand-new game vertical, the company also developed and released some hybrid games that mixed the gameplay of two types: live casino and video slots. The resulting titles were unique in all respects. As an example, take their innovative game show premised on the fabulous Gonzo’s Quest slot. Today, the NetEnt logotype is still displayed on their pokies but in fact, Evolution executives are in the driver’s seat. Bad news is that no new slots have been released since the end of 2020. If you look at NetEnt’s game list and apply the By Year filter, you will see the last slot game was produced in 2020 (Druid’s Dream).     

Net Entertainment used to place high emphasis on video slots—actually, almost every igaming studio is doing this since slots are loved by gamblers. The vast majority of games (140) in the NetEnt catalogue fall under the group of slots, while less than ten titles are table games. 

The games from this studio are awesome, and this is not a promotional figure of speech to lure you into trying their video slots. We do mean they are awesome (though some of them are somewhat below average, speaking frankly). Maybe, the key to the success is a narrow focus on slots. NetEnt guys have not been spreading themselves too thin – they stay focused on video slots, which is their field of concentration. The designers try to figure out something new in terms of bonuses and the full list of features found in their slots would be very long. NetEnt online casinos usually feature games with low-to-medium bet sizes that are in the range of CA$0.1 to CA$100 per spin, thus they are not ideal for high rollers. 

It’s time to rain on NetEnt’s parade. Some things around the studio are not as glittering as they look. It goes without saying that gambling sites rarely produce video slots by themselves. They rent them from slot providers and pay them part of their profits derived from slots. Sure, every online casino wants to fatten the profits and the best way to do so is to make players lose more. With regard to games, player winnings can be reduced by cutting a game RTP.

Pragmatic Play, IGT, Red Tiger, NetEnt, and about ten more studios develop some of their games with different RTPs. This kind of a loophole gives casinos a choice which game variation they want to acquire, and evidently most casinos would pick the one with a slimmed-down player return. Some of NetEnt games are known to have five RTP settings, meaning you can find say Twin Spin, Starburst, Butterfly Staxx, and some other games with an 96%, 94% or 92% RTP, depending on where you are playing. This is, sure, a bad thing for players, esp. the ones in high roller online casinos. To avoid this, one should look at paytables as they always note an effective RTP exactly for this variation.  

Visit the NetEnt game catalogue to find the full list of their creations. Here you will see the Year Launched menu where you can select any year to see the slots released at that time. Judging by that, the first games were produced before 2009 – the exact info is unknown as there’s an “undefined” option. Their early video slots made soon after the studio’s foundation were Arabian Nights (featuring a big progressive jackpot), Blood Suckers, Coins of Egypt, Flowers, and Ghost Pirates. With every subsequent year, they tried to launch 10 to 15 new video slots. What’s more, they tried their best to avoid cross-plagiarism throughout their own library and tried to saturate every new game with unique features – this is what some providers (even the giant Microgaming) were not able to elude in their first years.   

To get an idea of what kind of bonuses they have, it’s worth visiting their extensive webpage of games (see the link above) and locate the Functions dropdown. Click it to see a long list of items that represent bonus features. Some of them are Pick and Click, Bomber Feature, Avalanche, Floating Wilds, and Final Chance. If our website does not have a video slot write-up that you need, you can visit NetEnt’s site and look for it there. Or read our NetEnt casino reviews for more info.

Some slot providers ink contracts with film producers and celebrities to purchase the limited rights of using their names and imageries in their video slots. The resulting games turn out to become quite impressive as game studios usually inject big money to branded slots. When you play Ozzy Osbourne or Motorhead by NetEnt, you step up to these performers, hear their soundtracks embedded in the game, see the symbols associated with them, and feel the vibes of an original film or music. Branded video slots are often offered in NetEnt casinos with a welcome bonus, giving you a mix of extra money and entertainment. Other games grouped as Branded Slots on NetEnt’s site are The Invisible Man, Jumanji, Dracula, and Guns N’ Roses (13 slots in total).  

NetEnt features 7 video slots with a progressive jackpot, and this number will hardly ever go up for the reason explained above. Progressives are normally excluded from wagering NetEnt casino bonuses. Win statistics reveal that their games have paid out over 730 million euros for over ten years of monitoring them. One of their easiest jackpot to hit is Mega Fortune as it is won about every 4 months, with an average cash prize being 4m euros. The said slot game once held a world record for having produced a 17.8m win in 2013. 

Another prominent game of this kind is Arabian Nights, which has made about 50 lucky players instant millionaires since 2005. This game looks a bit dated for some of today’s players spoiled by three-dimensional animations but an average jackpot win of 1.5 million euros ekes out the lack of graphic sophistication. The slot has only ten paylines and the minimum bet that qualifies for a jackpot is as low as 10 cents per spin. Some real money online casinos have this slot as a local progressive jackpot version.

Hall of Gods rivals the likes of Mega Moolah in terms of an average jackpot prize, which is a hefty 5.5 million euros. In fact, it has a series of three jackpots, the smallest of which (Mini) is about 1000 to 1500 euros. Many players avoid this game as it yields the grand prize reluctantly, about once in 30 weeks.    

The prominent studio cannot boast an enviable suite of non-slot games. In fact, all they have is seven games in this category, one of which is only for mobile. Players are very likely to find their games dated as they lack the elegance and modern visual effects typical of many table games of today. Anyway, the full list of their table games is as follows:

• Roulette
• French Roulette
• American Roulette
• European Roulette
• Classic Blackjack: two side bets (21+3, Perfect Pairs), ideal for high rollers as the max bet is CA$5000. 
• Blackjack Single Deck (for mobile only)

The provider’s website also shows Jacks Or Better Double Up video poker; this is the only game of this kind. NetEnt has no baccarat, craps, and other games aside from the ones listed above. Online blackjack has a very high RTP of more than 99.5%.  

When NetEnt acted as an independent studio, it ran a live studio in Malta and offered a medium-sized collection of live tables, primarily live roulette and live blackjack. Many other providers arrange the tables in a way that lets a player see other tables as well. But NetEnt used another approach: each of their tables was standalone and its background was created with a Chroma Key technology—the thing which used to be criticised by many players. Sadly, Evolution did not acquire NetEnt’s live casino arm and the latter had to discontinue its operation.

The studio started to produce mobile games back in 2011. They created a NetEnt Touch subbrand for mobile-compatible titles and started to adapt their initially desktop games to smaller screens. Virtually every game in their back catalogue has excellent cross-platform compatibility, keeping the same features and payouts as their desktop peers but differing in the user controls/interface.  

If NetEnt kept on their development efforts, they would certainly be number one. But for now, their collection is complete and is not added any more. It tallies up at over a hundred superb video pokies with ingenious bonus features and only seven table games, including Jacks or Better. Their live dealer facility in Malta closed its doors in 2020. Not having the fixed player return is perhaps the only point of concern in relation to some video slots from Net Entertainment. The landmark games that most gamblers know and love are Gonzo’s Quest, Starburst, Dead Or Alive, Jumanji, and Vikings as well as a small pack of about five progressive slots. NetEnt is not an independent corporation any longer but the games distributed under its logo are still an ideal entertainment option for avid gamblers.