Magic Star Live Casino Review

Review of Magic Star Live

Magic Star Live Casino is an online betting site that was launched in 2015 and holds a gaming license through Curacao. The casino has a spacey, astral look and feel to it, and manages to mix in a series of software developers that many players will never have heard of. Do these features make the casino worth playing at?

Software and Games

Magic Star Live Casino is predominantly powered by a platform supplied by a company known as PlayPearls, which was new to me. As part of that platform, the casino offers games developed by PlayPearls, as well as The Art of Games, and several live dealer games broadcast from land based venues from Actual Gaming. The casino operates on a web-based instant play platform, which keeps you from having to download and install a piece of software. Instead everything from registration to depositing to playing games is done through your browser, which is very convenient. The casino also supports play on most of its games via mobile devices.

There are dozens of games to play at Magic Star Live Casino, with the site offering a bunch of video slots, a smaller selection of classic styled slots, video poker, table games and live dealer games. The video slots are by far the largest selection of games available, and players will find games with various themes and features that run the gamut of standard slot machine tropes, including ancient Egypt, mermaids, Aztecs, vampires and leprechauns, among many more. The oddest is perhaps the wild-west themed game with the rather unattractive name of Spitoon! I have to say though that overall I was disappointed with the games offered by PlayPearls and The Art of Games. The quality of artwork and sound effects leave a lot to be desired and do not compare favourably to industry heavyweights such as Net Entertainment or Microgaming. Still, there is something to be said for playing something new, so if you are a keen slots player who has seemingly seen it all before, you might just find something different here.

The table game selection is more impressive than I expected after looking at the slot machine. Magic Star Live offers blackjack, poker, baccarat, war, and others. There are also many variants available, which boosts the number of games in the library. These standard play games are complimented by live dealer games, which are broadcast through Actual Gaming's live feed from the Fitzwilliam Card Club in Dublin, Ireland. This allows you to get a land casino experience from the comfort of your home as you play at tables that are shared with real punters who are playing at the club. The idea of Actual Gaming's real table games is a good one, but the reality is that it doesn't quite match up with the execution due to the high camera angles required to allow the games to be played by physical customers as well as online punters at the same time. This can make the games harder to follow than live dealer games that are dealt on dedicated online-only tables.

Banking and Customer Support

The banking options are decent at Magic Star Live, with deposit options including MasterCard, Neteller, Paysafecard, Visa, and Skrill. Withdrawals are processed through bank wire, Skrill, and Neteller. However there is a relatively low withdrawal limit of only €3000 per week, which could inconvenience you if you manage to hit it big.

The customer support staff at Magic Star Live is quoted as being available 24/7 through both live chat and email. I'd be lying if I said that I had any success getting through to the help though. Whenever I tried to ping the help through the live chat function the staff was either listed as unavailable and I could leave a message, or when listed as available they never answered. I don't know if this is a long-term issue, but I did try to get through to help multiple times on separate days and never had any luck. So I gave in and left a message and again, never got a reply. Hello? Anyone home?

Responsible Gaming, Fairness, and Security

Magic Star Live acknowledges responsible gaming through a page on their site, offering players information on counseling services that assist with problem betting as well as limit and self-exclusion services that can keep you from depositing should you have a problem. However unlike most casinos that are run from strictly regulated jurisdictions these days, there is no way for you to set your own limits through your account settings. Instead you must rely on contacting support to ask to have limits set which, given my experience trying to track down someone in support, could be problematic.

The casino does not have any information regarding outside auditing that is done on its software to ensure that its random number generator is fair, nor does it publish either the real or theoretical payout percentage figures for its games. I looked up the websites of its suppliers, PlayPearls and The Art of Games, for this information and came up empty-handed. This is not reassuring at all.

Security and gameplay at this casino is handled through SSL encryption technology at all times, which scrambles your personal and financial information to keep it out of the hands of criminals. This is a good sign that Magic Star Live at least knows what they're doing in terms of making the site operational.

Conclusion

Magic Star Live Casino has a novel casino platform, a diverse selection of games that you probably haven't played anywhere else, and a decent set of options should you want to deposit money there. That is good, but on the other hand there are a number of serious problems with this casino that make it very hard to trust with my money. In particular, it is very disappointing to see the non-responsive support channels and the lack of any kind of independent third party testing of the games. Until these issues are addressed, I would advise that discretion is the better part of valour when it comes to playing at this casino.