Spadegaming in Malaysia
The Studio Behind Fishing God
Its games sit in almost every Malaysian casino lobby, and its logo gets used as a trust badge by sites we have blacklisted. We checked the licence claims against the public registers — and corrected our own page in the process.
Overview of Spadegaming
Spadegaming is an Asian slot studio founded in 2007, and its games sit in the lobby of almost every online casino that advertises to Malaysians — Fishing God, Cai Shen 888, FaFaFa, Golden Monkey. If you have played slots in Malaysia, you have played Spadegaming.
Evidence level: desk research. We have no logged inspection of a Spadegaming-carrying operator tied to this page. Every claim below is either sourced to a named third party, checked by us against a public regulator register on the date stated, or marked as unverified. We did not deposit, play or withdraw anywhere to write this. See how we test.
Here is the part nobody tells you: a Spadegaming logo in a lobby tells you nothing about whether that casino will pay you. We searched the Malta Gaming Authority's public licensee register on 13 August 2026 and found no licensee whose name begins “Spade” — while the same studio's name is used as a trust badge by operators we have put on our blacklist.
Below: what we could and could not verify about the licensing, which games matter in Malaysia and where their RTP figures actually come from, how to check a provider claim yourself in two minutes, and a list of the errors this rewrite fixes on our own previous page.
Who Spadegaming Is
Spadegaming (also written Spade Gaming) is a game studio founded in 2007, originally out of the Philippines, building content aimed squarely at Asian players. It moved from land-based interactive systems to online around 2012, then to mobile-first HTML5 in 2013, and later opened a Malta office.
A note on that paragraph: the history above comes from trade-press and B2B provider profiles (SoftGamings, AboutSlots, Upgaming), not from the company. Spadegaming's own website is a JavaScript application that served us no readable corporate text when we requested it on 13 August 2026 — the page returns a title and nothing else. Treat the history as reporting, not as company-confirmed fact.
Portfolio size is genuinely unclear. Published figures range from 100+ to 170+ titles, and Spadegaming publishes no authoritative count anywhere we could reach. Anyone quoting one exact number — including the “120+” our own page used to carry — is repeating an aggregator's guess. We would rather print the spread than a false precision.
The house style is not in dispute: Chinese and Southeast Asian mythology, high-volatility maths, loud audio, and an arcade fishing genre (tembak ikan) far bigger in Malaysia than in Europe.
The Licence Check: What We Verified, and What We Couldn't
This is the section that matters. Operator sites and affiliate pages routinely state that Spadegaming is “licensed by the MGA and Curaçao.” We tried to confirm that against the primary sources.
| Claim | What we found | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority | We searched the MGA Licensee Register on 13 Aug 2026 (register timestamp 13/08/2026 10:57). A name search for “Spade” returned “No items found.” A control search for “Pragmatic” correctly returned Pragmatic Solutions MT Limited, so the search itself works. | Not confirmed on the register under that name |
| Obtained an MGA licence in 2019 | Spadegaming published a news item titled “Spadegaming Officially Licensed by MGA” in 2019 and trade press repeated it, describing a Type 1 critical-supply licence. We could not load the page body — the site renders via JavaScript — and no licence number is published anywhere we could find. | Reported, not independently verified |
| “First Asian supplier to hold an MGA licence” | No primary source found. This is a marketing superlative, and it appeared on our own page until this rewrite. | Unverified |
| Licensed / certified in Curaçao | The Curaçao Gaming Authority licence register publishes its online-gaming licence list and its Article 5.17 certificate-holder list as downloadable PDFs. We could not extract text from those PDFs to confirm or rule out an entry. | Could not verify — check it yourself (link above) |
| Games tested by iTech Labs | Widely reported across provider directories. iTech Labs was acquired by Gaming Laboratories International in 2023, so it is no longer an independent second opinion alongside GLI. No public per-game certificate index for Spadegaming exists. | Reported, no primary certificate located |
How to read that result honestly
“No items found” does not prove Spadegaming is unlicensed, and we are not saying it is. B2B licences are issued to a corporate entity, which may be registered under a name containing no “Spade” at all — exactly the trap we described on our JILI provider guide, where the licences commonly attributed to the studio turned out to belong to a differently-named company.
What the result does prove is more useful to you: a player cannot verify the MGA claim by searching the brand name — so it is not a claim to accept at face value from a casino footer. We will update this page the day anyone supplies the registered entity name and licence number.
How to Verify a Provider or Casino Licence Yourself (2 Minutes)
This works for any operator or studio, not just this one. Cara semak lesen:
- Find the exact claim. Scroll to the footer. Note the regulator named and the licence number. Vague wording (“internationally licensed”) with no number is already a red flag.
- Go to the regulator's own register — never a link the casino gives you. MGA: mgalicenseeregister.mga.org.mt. Curaçao: the CGA licence register (download the PDF, then search the company name inside it). A seal that opens a page on the casino's own domain is worth nothing.
- Match the company name, not the brand. Registers list corporate entities. If the footer says “operated by X Ltd,” search X Ltd. If no company name is given at all, you have your answer.
If a site fails step 1, stop there. Our guide to bonus and T&C terminology covers what usually fails next.
The Games That Matter in Malaysia — and Where Their RTPs Come From
Spadegaming does not publish a central RTP list. Every figure below is a third-party database value, not a studio-confirmed one — ours included. Treat them as indicative.
We are also not going to tell you the number in front of you is the number you are playing. We could not establish, either way, whether Spadegaming ships operator-selectable RTP builds the way some studios do; we found no studio documentation, no aggregator technical note and no certificate that settles it. If the game shows an RTP in its own info panel or paytable, that is the figure to go by — it beats anything published about it, ours included.
| Game | Type | Published RTP (third-party) | Why Malaysians play it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fishing God | Arcade fishing (tembak ikan) | Not published | The genre benchmark — multiplayer, boss catches, ubiquitous in MY lobbies |
| Cai Shen 888 | Slot, God of Wealth theme | 97.06% | CNY-season staple; the theme the market asks for by name |
| Fafafa 2 | Classic slot | 97.12% | Simple, low-friction, huge brand recall |
| Mayan Gems | Slot | 97.15% | One of the highest published RTPs in the range |
| Tiger Warrior | Slot | 97.13% | High-volatility Asian mythology |
| Spins Stone | Slot | 97.32% | Highest published RTP we found from the studio |
| Golden Monkey | Slot, Wukong theme | Not published | Stacked wilds, x3 bonus multiplier |
| Heroes: Rise of the Legend | Slot | Not published | Cinematic presentation, four hero features |
About that “97.1% average RTP”
You will see it quoted everywhere, and it was on this page until today. It is a third-party aggregate across whichever titles a database happens to list — not a studio figure, and not an average of the full catalogue. Nobody publishing it can tell you which games went into it.
And a high RTP is still a losing proposition by design. 97% RTP returns RM97 per RM100 wagered averaged across millions of spins, not per session, and turnover accumulates far faster than players expect. Our guide to RTP, house edge and volatility shows the arithmetic, and the wagering and rollover explainer shows what a bonus condition does to it.
How Spadegaming Games Actually Play
Three mechanics recur across the catalogue.
- Maxways dynamic grids. Spadegaming's own ways-to-win engine, which expands the grid between spins. Ways counts run to 46,656 on the 6×6 layout of Brothers Kingdom 2 and 200,704 on six-reel titles such as Clash of the Giants and Legacy of Kong Maxways — both figures published by Spadegaming on its own social channels.
- Licensed Megaways, separately. Spadegaming signed a Megaways licensing agreement with Big Time Gaming, announced in September 2021 and reported by the industry trade press at the time. This one checks out, and it is worth being precise about: Maxways is Spadegaming's own engine, Megaways is BTG's, and the studio uses both.
- Cascading reels with grid growth. Winning symbols clear, the grid levels up, and multipliers build through the bonus round.
- Arcade shooters. Fishing God and Alien Hunter are not slots — you aim and fire, with per-target payouts and boss multipliers. They feel skill-based. The house edge is still in the maths, and the shot cost is the wager. Third-party listings quote max wins up to 25,000x stake on titles in this range, which by definition means the median outcome is nowhere near it. Aim and target selection change your variance far more than your expected return.
A Spadegaming Logo Is Not a Safety Signal
This is the point of the page. Real provider names get used as borrowed credibility by operators with nothing else to show. Across the Malaysia-facing casinos we have reviewed, Spadegaming appears in the advertised lobby of operators we recommend and operators we have blacklisted alike:
- UEA8 and me88 — reviewed operators carrying Spadegaming alongside JILI, NextSpin, Microgaming and Pragmatic Play.
- i5 Malaysia, Waja33 and Gempak99 — all three advertise Spadegaming content, and all three are on our blacklist for licensing and accountability failures that have nothing to do with the games in the lobby.
A lobby screenshot is trivially copied, and an unverifiable game feed can be cloned or proxied. The provider tells you what you will be playing. It tells you nothing about who holds your money, or whether anyone can make them return it. That is answered by the licence, the payout record and the ownership — what our 25-step methodology scores.
Where Malaysians Can Play Spadegaming
Start with operators that clear our checks, rather than searching the game name and taking the first result — that search is heavily gamed.
| Operator | Our review | Spadegaming in the advertised lobby |
|---|---|---|
| UEA8 | UEA8 review | Listed, alongside a broad fishing-game selection |
| me88 | me88 review | Listed, in the slots section alongside Pragmatic Play, Microgaming and Playtech |
| BK8 | BK8 review | Not verified by us — listed here because it is our highest-scoring MY operator overall |
| 12Play | 12Play review | Not verified by us — second-highest scoring MY operator overall |
Aggregator deals change without notice, so treat that last column as a dated observation rather than a permanent fact. We deliberately do not print game-library totals or supplier counts for these sites: the figures circulating for them trace back to affiliate pages that recycle each other, and we could not tie any of them to an operator's own disclosure.
For the full vetted ranking with cashier, KYC and bonus-terms scoring, start at best online casino Malaysia. Depositing by Touch 'n Go or DuitNow? Read the e-wallet casino guide first. And if a site marketing Spadegaming games appears on our blacklist, the provider name changes nothing about our verdict.
Corrections to Claims You'll See Elsewhere — Including Our Own
The version of this page that stood until 13 August 2026 carried errors. This rewrite fixes them, and we are listing them because our corrections practice should be visible rather than quiet.
| Claim on the old page | Problem |
|---|---|
| “Power of Thor Megaways (Asian version) utilises the engine” | Wrong studio. Power of Thor Megaways is a Pragmatic Play title. Removed. |
| “CEO Danny Vincent” | Unverified. No primary source located for the name. Removed. |
| “97.1% Avg RTP” presented as a studio statistic | A third-party aggregate, not published by Spadegaming. Re-attributed above. |
| “First Asian supplier to acquire an MGA licence” | Marketing superlative with no primary source. Removed. |
| Fishing God “RTP: Skill” | Misleading. Arcade fishing games have a mathematical return; framing it as skill implies the player can beat it. |
| “120+ games” as a firm count | No authoritative source. Published figures range from 100+ to 170+. Replaced with the spread. |
| “You're in safe hands” | Not something a review site can promise about a third party. Removed. |
One claim on the old page checked out, and we kept it. The Megaways licence from Big Time Gaming is real — announced in September 2021 and reported by the trade press at the time. A corrections list that only ever moves in one direction is not a corrections list, so it is worth saying when the previous version was right.
Frequently Asked Questions
Spadegaming and the operators carrying it state MGA and Curacao licensing. We searched the MGA Licensee Register on 13 August 2026 and found no entry beginning "Spade", which may simply mean the licence sits under a different corporate name. No licence number is published anywhere we could find. We treat the claim as unconfirmed until we can match it to a registered entity.
We have no evidence of that and are not alleging it. The realistic risk in Malaysia is not the studio's maths, it is an operator running a cloned or proxied game feed, or one that simply refuses to pay out. Both are operator problems, not provider problems.
Fishing God for the arcade fishing crowd, Cai Shen 888 and FaFaFa for classic slot players.
Demo versions of most titles run on free-play aggregators. Demo mode uses the same maths, but no real money moves, so nothing is won or lost.
No. The Court of Appeal ruled in 2023 that online gambling is an offence under the Common Gaming Houses Act 1953; the Betting Act 1953 covers betting separately. Reported penalties run to fines around RM5,000 for players, with far heavier sanctions for operators. A dedicated anti-online-gambling bill has been in drafting through 2026 but had not been tabled in the Dewan Rakyat as of 13 August 2026, and the government has not settled whether it will be a standalone act or an amendment to the existing law. This site reports on operators; it does not tell you to use them.
Call your bank's 24-hour hotline to freeze transfers, and call the National Scam Response Centre on 997. Official sources conflict on two points and it matters when you are in a hurry: the 997 line was announced in 2025 as moving to 24-hour operation from September 2025, but the NSRC's own page still listed 8.00am to 8.00pm daily when we checked on 13 August 2026; and while the government's position, restated in March 2026, is that a 997 call is itself treated as a police report, the NSRC's own page still says a report must be made within 24 hours or police follow-up cannot proceed. Call 997 first to freeze the funds, then lodge a police report at the nearest station anyway. You can also run the payee account through Semak Mule, PDRM's mule-account checker, and keep every screenshot and transaction reference.
18+ only. Play responsibly. Gambling carries real financial risk and the house edge never goes away — no RTP figure changes that. Play with money you can afford to lose, and if it has stopped being fun or you are chasing losses, stop. Gambling is prohibited for Muslims in Malaysia, and land-based venues set 21 as the minimum age. This guide is informational and is not encouragement to gamble. You can check a bank account number against reported commercial-crime cases on Semak Mule, run by the Royal Malaysia Police's Commercial Crime Investigation Department. Our review standards: methodology.
What We Verified
Where to play Spadegaming safely
The provider is not the risk — the operator is. Start from the sites that passed our cashier, KYC and bonus-terms checks.
Vetted Malaysia top 10