Apricot and Microgaming Casinos: What the Name Means in 2026
Whoever types "apricot casino" or "apricot slots" into a search engine is usually looking for the casinos that run the games of Microgaming, the company of the Isle of Man that wrote the software of the first online casino in 1994 and supplied the industry for three decades, and finds a tangle of names instead (Microgaming, Apricot, Quickfire, Games Global). The tangle has a simple shape once the dates are put in order. This page puts them in order, then says which casinos we list and how you can recognise that catalogue in any lobby.
We have written it for the reader of the searches ("top apricot casinos", "apricot casino games", "best apricot slots"), who deserves a plain answer. There are no Apricot games. Apricot is the company that supplies the "platform" on which some casinos run, while the games that carried the Microgaming name have belonged since 2022 to another company, Games Global, and everything else on this page follows from that distinction.
Three dates and one name
The first date is 1994, when Microgaming Software Systems Limited, in Douglas on the Isle of Man, developed the software of the first online casino. For the following twenty years "Microgaming casino" meant a casino running on its platform and offering its games, which were the same thing at the time (the company made both).
The second date is June 2018, when that company changed its registered name to Apricot Investments Limited and became a holding of "public and private assets", while a subsidiary (renamed Quickfire Limited) went on trading as Microgaming. The players noticed nothing. We noticed little ourselves, since the lobbies, the games and the name on them stayed exactly as they were (the operators went on calling it Microgaming, and so did we).
The third date is 3 May 2022, when Games Global, a new company backed by private capital and led by Walter Bugno, completed the purchase of Microgaming's distribution business and of its whole games portfolio: some three thousand titles and jackpots, supplied at the time to about nine hundred casino brands around the world. What remained in the Isle of Man was the platform business (the "back office" of a casino: accounts, payments, the recording of every bet), and Microgaming went on providing it to its operators.
The fourth passage is the name under which that remaining business presents itself since 2024, its thirtieth year: Apricot, with a new identity and the declared intention of being a platform company and nothing else (its software, the company says, processes over two hundred and ten million bets a day). A reader who meets the word "Apricot" on a casino's website in 2026 is meeting the platform, not a game studio!
Why there are no Apricot games
A platform and a games catalogue are two different trades, and the confusion of the searches comes from the thirty years in which one company practised both. The platform is the machinery you never see (the registration, the "cashier", the bonus engine, the reports that the licensing authority demands). The catalogue is what you see as soon as the lobby opens: the slots, the tables, the jackpots, each with the name of the "studio" that made it in its information panel.
Since May 2022 the catalogue has been Games Global's, which releases the old titles and new ones under its own name, and a casino running on the Apricot platform may offer that catalogue together with the games of dozens of other studios (or, in principle, none of them). The expression "apricot slots" therefore describes nothing that exists; the slots you have in mind (Mega Moolah, Thunderstruck II, Immortal Romance, Avalon II, Break da Bank Again) are Games Global slots, found in casinos that run on many different platforms.
How to recognise the catalogue in a lobby
The quickest check is the information panel of any game, the small "i" in a corner of the screen: it names the studio, and on the old Microgaming titles it now says Games Global (the old name survives here and there, on catalogues not yet relabelled). The second check is the filter by provider in the lobby, where "Games Global" or "Microgaming" appears among the studios if the catalogue is there (most lobbies have such a filter, usually behind a small funnel icon). The third is the "progressive" network, since Mega Moolah and its sister games are offered only to casinos connected to it.
The footer of the casino says something else, and it is the thing we care about more than the catalogue. There you find the licence (Malta, Gibraltar, the United Kingdom, Curaçao), the name of the company that holds it and sometimes the words "powered by" followed by the name of the platform. A casino announcing itself as "an Apricot casino" is saying where its accounts are kept, nothing more, and that tells nobody whether a complaint will be heard.
We read a lobby in this order, and we suggest the same order to you: the licence first, the cashier second (the methods, the minimum withdrawal, the time announced for a payment), the catalogue third. A beautiful catalogue on a weak licence is a slot machine in a shop with no counter!
Mega Moolah, the jackpot that made the name
The fame of the old catalogue rests on one game above all, Mega Moolah, a progressive jackpot fed by a small part of every bet placed on it in all the connected casinos at once. On 6 October 2015 a British soldier won £13,209,300 on it (a payout that Guinness recorded as the largest in an online slot), and in April 2021 a Belgian player, at Napoleon Sports & Casino, took €19,430,723 from the "Absolootly Mad" version with a stake of fifteen euros, which the operator and Microgaming described as a new world record.
Prizes of that size have a price. The player pays it in the base game. Since a share of every bet feeds the jackpot, the game returns to the players, outside the jackpot, less than a comparable slot without one, and whoever plays it for the ordinary wins rather than for the dream is choosing the wrong game. We say it here because the searches for "apricot slots" lead, nine times out of ten, to that family of jackpots.
The casinos we list
The three casinos below have carried the Microgaming catalogue for many years and still offer it through Games Global. Each card shows the welcome offer that the operator publishes, and the licence written under it, which is the first thing we check; they are operators addressing the international market, as the sentence at the foot of this page says, and whether their offer can be accepted from your country is for you to verify.
Royal Vegas and Euro Palace are two brands of the same group, both with a Maltese licence written under the card. Betway, which most players know as a bookmaker and which runs its casino under the same brand, keeps a casino lobby in which the Games Global titles sit beside those of other studios, and is licensed in Malta and in Great Britain. None of the three has been tested by us for this page (the offers are those published on the operators' sites on the date at the top), and the terms are read, as always, before the first spin.
What a "top Apricot casinos" list is worth
Very little, in our experience, because the word selects a platform and not a quality. Two casinos on the same platform can differ in everything that counts for the player (the licence, the speed of the cashier, the wagering conditions of a bonus, the care taken in answering a complaint, and the time it takes to answer one), and a ranking built on the name of the software tells you which machinery sits behind the site. About as useful as the printer's name on a deck of cards.
Our own lists are built on other things, and the method is described on the page that explains how we review; the catalogue enters our judgement only at the end, as a matter of taste (whoever likes the classics will want to find them). The "best apricot casino" of the searches is, in plain words, the best-licensed casino that happens to carry those games. It is found by reading footers, not lobbies.
A name, three companies, one lesson
Microgaming built a good part of online gambling, and its games are still among the most played thirty years later; the company that bears its legacy is now called Apricot and makes platforms, and the games have a new owner. For the player nothing has changed at the tables; everything that mattered before still matters: the licence, the conditions, and our old habit of trying a game in "demo" mode before the first real stake, which costs nothing and tells more than any list.
Every offer on this page is for adults (eighteen years, or the higher age that applies where you live), and the services that answer at any hour, country by country, are at the foot of the page.
Frequently asked questions
What is an Apricot casino?
A casino that runs on the platform of Apricot, the Isle of Man company that used to be Microgaming (the registered name changed to Apricot Investments in June 2018, and the brand followed in 2024). The platform keeps the accounts and the cashier; it says nothing about which games the casino offers or about its licence, which are the two things worth checking.
Are there Apricot slots or Apricot games?
No. The games that carried the Microgaming name (Mega Moolah, Thunderstruck II, Immortal Romance and the rest of the catalogue) were sold on 3 May 2022 to Games Global, which releases them under its own name, so "apricot slots" is a search for a catalogue that today belongs to another company.
Is Apricot the same as Microgaming?
It is the same company under a new name, reduced to its platform business: the games portfolio and the distribution business went to Games Global in 2022, and what remained adopted the Apricot brand in its thirtieth year, 2024.
How do I know whether a casino has the Microgaming games?
Open the information panel of a game (the small "i" on the screen) and read the name of the studio, or use the lobby filter by provider: Games Global, or Microgaming on catalogues not yet relabelled. Mega Moolah and the other progressive jackpots appear only in casinos connected to that network.
Which casinos listed here carry that catalogue?
Royal Vegas, Euro Palace and Betway, whose cards are on this page with the offer that each operator publishes and the licence under it (the licence, not the catalogue, is what we check first).
What is the biggest Mega Moolah win?
€19,430,723, won in April 2021 by a Belgian player at Napoleon Sports & Casino on the "Absolootly Mad" version with a stake of fifteen euros. The previous record, £13,209,300 won by a British soldier on 6 October 2015, had been recorded by Guinness.