International Game Technology
International Game Technology is a Reno, Nevada based maker of slot machines and other gaming products. The company also operates a facility in Las Vegas, Nevada and has branch offices around the United States. Presently, IGT also has offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Africa. For purposes of facilitating operations in Latin America, IGT also maintains a presence in South America.
IGT was founded by William S. Redd in 1975 as A-1 Supply. The name was changed to SIRCOMA in 1979 and finally International Game Technology in 1981.
On October 27, 2003, IGT acquired Acres Gaming, a slot machine and gaming software development company.
On August 25, 2005, IGT acquired WagerWorks, a San Francisco, California based company that provides software for online casinos. Wager Works has exclusive rights to provide online versions of slot machine games like Wheel of Fortune, I Dream of Jeannie and The Price is Right.
On December 21, 2006, IGT completed its acquisition of Venture Catalyst Incorporated, changing its name to Mariposa Software Inc. and selling its gaming consulting division to a group of its previous management. Mariposa Software continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of IGT, enhancing IGT’s positioning as a single-source supplier, offering a complete package for all of a casino’s gaming & profit operations.
Further expansion in the Class III market has led IGT to New York, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, along with the cruise ship industry. According to New Jersey and Pennsylvania law, IGT cannot enter without a distributor; in accordance to state law, AC Coin bought Class III IGT machines and is now entering them into the New Jersey and Pennsylvania market under the AC-Coin/IGT name. IGT had a similar problem in the Oklahoma market when a new state compact was introduced allowing Class III vendors to enter Native-American Indian Oklahoma casinos (where before, only Class II games were allowed); in accordance to this compact, the casino had to offer an electronic back-end system to monitor the hard-meters within the game. IGT also offers the IGT Advantage System, which is very expensive, thus prompting smaller casinos (which are the majority of Oklahoma’s 95+ casinos are) to find independent companies to monitor the meters.
On July 8. 2008 IGT completed their acquisition of Cyberview Technology, a company with intellectual property and experience in the field of server-based-gaming. The acquisition of Cyberview Technology also brought a contract to supply gaming machines to the UK’s biggest bookmaker, Ladbrokes, which will allow IGT to supply their slot machine games to the UK market
The company created the Slot Accounting System (SAS) protocol, one of IGT’s most notable technologies is EZ-Pay, their ticket-in, ticket-out system.
