Stake — player complaint #61161, 2022-06-16: other

Hello there, I would like to submit my complaint against Stake.com Casino, which is owned and operated by Medium Rare, N.V. (hereinafter "Stake", "We" or "Us"), a company with head office at Fransche Bloemweg 4 Curaçao. Medium Rare is licensed and regulated by the Government of Curaçao under the gaming license 8048/JAZ issued to Antillephone. I started using Stake in April 2021, as I discovered this website on a livestream of a famous French streamer. He has an affiliate contract with them, so I was offered to have a 30€ bonus to play on Stake. I didn't use any VPN or anything else, and you have to keep in mind that I filled out the ID and address verification, using my real details which showed that I was based in France. Few months ago, I started realizing that I was suffering gambling addiction, which never happened to me before. The reason why my gambling addiction behavior started on Stake.com is that they don't provide any bet limit, or deposit limit option. They also don't do anything to prevent this gambling addiction, as they don't analyse your gaming behavior at all. I started complaining about this situation, and they decided to block my account, using their Terms of services. I also complained that they shouldn't have let me play on their website, as playing from France was forbidden on Stake after I started to play on this website. As they told me, they added France to the banned list during June 2021. But they never told me about it, nor sent me the new ToS. And they of course didn't close my account, which they must have done. The reason why they added France to the banned list is because the French Regulator decided to block www.stake.com in France during June 2021 (https://igamingbusiness.com/french-regulator-blocks-access-to-stake-com-and-cbet/). And indeed, during June 2021, I added some troubles to reach www.stake.com, and I told the support from Stake about this issue. Instead of explaining to me that they must now block french players, they provided me with some mirror websites to use to be able to keep betting on their website. I think that this was 100% illegal, as Stake added France on their banned list, and as they added all the information to know that I was based in France, they should have told me that they must close my account. This is the reason why I'm asking them to refund me my whole deposit (around 25k€). Best regards