Spadegaming and Habanero: The Regional Studios

Spadegaming and Habanero are two mid-sized slot studios that turn up in the same casino lobbies across Southeast Asia, which is why we cover them together. Spadegaming describes itself as an Asia-based developer of Asian-themed slots and fishing games; Habanero builds slots and table games for licensed operators and lists 26 markets where its games are certified. Both are supplied under Malta licences that we found on the regulator’s own register. What separates them for a player is mostly what each publishes: Habanero puts a full specification sheet, including a range of possible RTP settings, on every game, while Spadegaming’s public material is thinner and harder to reach.

A note on sourcing: Spadegaming’s website did not load on our network, so its statements below come from archived copies of its site data, dated in the sources list. Habanero’s site loaded normally and we read it directly on 20 October 2026. The licence details come from the Malta Gaming Authority’s live register.

Two Studios, One Kind of Lobby

Neither studio deals with players. Both sell games to online casinos, which then decide which titles to show, which RTP version to run and who is allowed to play. That makes the casino’s own licence the one that counts if anything goes wrong, a point that holds for every studio we cover.

The two companies come at the market from opposite ends. Spadegaming’s site calls it “an Asia-based company” and says it has “led the way in mobile development since year 2013”. Its About text says the Malta licence lets it “extend its products and services to the gaming-entertainment industry in Europe”. Habanero’s site points the other way: its certification list is mostly European and Latin American, and the Philippines is the only Southeast Asian market on it.

Of the casinos we have reviewed, 96M, me88, Maxim88 and Starbuck88 list Spadegaming among their providers, and me88, 1xBet and PlayAmo list Habanero. The table further down this page reads those lists straight from our casino data files.

The Malta Licences, Checked on the Register

Each studio names a Malta Gaming Authority licence, and both numbers match the MGA’s own licensee register:

Field on the MGA register	Spadegaming	Habanero
Company name	S.P.G Malta LTD	Habanero Systems Limited
Registration number	C82473	C 89602
Authorisation number	MGA/B2B/482/2018	MGA/B2B/643/2018
Authorisation type	Type 1 Gaming Service	Type 1 Gaming Service
Status on 20 October 2026	Licensed	Licensed
Registered address	Triq Ghar id-Dud, Sliema	Quantum House, Abate Rigord Street, Ta’ Xbiex

The link between Spadegaming and S.P.G Malta comes from Spadegaming itself. The footer of its website reads: “This website is operated by S.P.G. Malta Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of Malta with registration number C82473 and licensed and regulated by the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) under the licence: MGA/B2B/482/2018 (issued in December 2018).” The verification link behind its MGA logo points at the same company record on the regulator’s seal service. The studio’s news archive dates its announcement of the licence to February 2019.

Habanero states its licence on every page of its site, in the same terms the register uses. “B2B” means a business-to-business licence to supply games to other operators, and “Type 1” is the MGA’s category for casino-style games such as slots, roulette and blackjack.

Neither studio appears in the UK Gambling Commission’s register of gambling businesses. We searched its full downloadable list, 2,632 businesses, and ran Habanero through its online search, and found nothing under Spadegaming, S.P.G or Habanero. That is worth knowing because Habanero’s Solutions page includes the United Kingdom in its list of 26 markets where its “Games and RNG” are certified, but the licences it names on its own site come from Malta, Romania, Panama, Sweden, the City of Buenos Aires and Peru. A certification is a test result for a game; it is not a licence to supply that market, and we have not found a British licence under either name.

If you want to run the same check on a casino rather than a studio, our guide on how to check a casino licence explains which registers to use and what a real entry looks like.

What PAGCOR Has Approved

The Philippine regulator publishes, for each studio, the list of games its Electronic Gaming Licensing Department has approved for PAGCOR-licensed operators. Both lists are dated 19 May 2026.

• Spadegaming: 13 titles, all slots, including Lucky Koi, Lucky Koi Exclusive, Dragon Gold and Big Prosperity.
• Habanero: 133 games, of which 128 are slots and 5 are table games: two blackjack variants, Caribbean Hold’em, European Roulette and Three Card Poker.

The gap between those lists and each studio’s own catalogue is large. Spadegaming’s public game list holds 69 titles, so roughly one in five has a PAGCOR approval. Only two of the 13 approved games, Lucky Koi and Lucky Koi Exclusive, carry the same game code on Spadegaming’s own list; several others look like different builds of familiar names, such as “Big Prosperity SA” and “Dragon Gold SA” on the studio’s list, which may be separate versions of the same games. Habanero’s approved list matches its own game codes one for one: all 133 appear in its 227-game catalogue.

For a player in the Philippines, this is the practical test: a game on PAGCOR’s list, at a PAGCOR-licensed casino, sits inside the local system. The same title at an offshore site does not.

Habanero’s Game Sheets: Several RTPs, Not One

This is where the two studios differ most, and it matters more than any game theme. Every game on Habanero’s site has a public sheet listing its reel layout, volatility, maximum multiplier and a field headed “Available RTPs”. We read all 227 sheets on 20 October 2026. Of the 204 slots, 200 list more than one RTP:

RTP options on the sheet	Number of slots
86%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	95
86%, 92%, 94%, 96%, 98%	29
94%, 96%	25
92%, 94%, 96%	14
87%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	10
Other combinations	29
No RTP shown	2

Across the 202 slots with figures, the lowest option was 86% on 135 of them and 87% on another 11. The highest option was 98% on 144 slots and 96% on 54. In plain terms, most Habanero slots can be run by a casino at anything from 86% to 98%, and the game looks the same either way.

Habanero is open about this. Its responsible gaming page says every title’s theoretical RTP “is disclosed in-game and on its game sheet”. That is the right place to look. If the in-game information screen at your casino shows 86% for a slot the studio also offers at 98%, you are playing the 86% version, and over many spins that is a twelve-point difference in what the game is built to pay back. Our explainer on slot volatility and RTP covers why neither number predicts a single session, but the version a casino chooses still shapes the long run.

Here is what the sheets showed for some of the Habanero titles most often seen in Asian lobbies:

Game	Layout	Volatility	Available RTPs	Max multiplier
Hot Hot Fruit	5x3	Very high	86%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	x5,087
Koi Gate	5x3	High	86%, 92%, 94%, 96%, 98%	x480
Fa Cai Shen	5x3	Very high	86%, 92%, 94%, 96%, 98%	x1,010
Lucky Fortune Cat	5x3	Very high	86%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	x1,200
Wealth Inn	3x3	Low	86%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	x188
5 Lucky Lions	6x4	Low	86%, 92%, 94%, 97%, 98%	x527

On volatility, Habanero’s labels lean high. Of the 204 slots, 66 are rated very high, 65 high, 50 medium, 16 low, 5 very low and 2 “ultra high”. The top of the paytable runs to x174,238 on Fortune Dragon Joy and x153,902 on Wild Flow, but those figures describe the rarest possible outcome, not something a session is likely to reach.

Spadegaming’s Catalogue

Spadegaming’s public list is smaller and older. Its 69 titles run from a release dated October 2015 to Juicy Market in April 2026; 45 are line-based slots and 24 use “ways” to win. The titles the studio itself flags as popular include FaFaFa, Baby Cai Shen, Double Fortune, Lucky Koi, 5 Fortune Dragons, Princess Wang, Zeus and Mr Chu Tycoon. It also makes fishing games, such as Fishing God and Fishing War, and its news archive notes that it integrated the Megaways mechanic in 2021.

Its game detail pages carry a single RTP figure and a volatility label for each title. Because the site was blocked for us, the only detail record we could retrieve was Double Flame: 96.5%, medium volatility, five reels and 25 lines with an extra “Blazing Reel”. We cannot tell from what we read whether Spadegaming offers casinos alternative RTP versions in the way Habanero does, so the in-game information screen is again the only figure to trust.

On testing, Spadegaming says its games “are certified by BMM Testlabs & iTech Labs”. Its news archive lists an iTech Labs certification in 2017, BMM Testlabs certification in 2023, BMM certification of seven titles in June 2025 and, in September 2025, certification by BMM “under Brazil’s Federal jurisdiction”. Those are the studio’s statements; we did not see the certificates.

Built-in Checks a Player Can Use

Habanero offers one tool that is genuinely useful to players. Its Game Authenticity page says every real-money Habanero game has an option in the in-game menu that opens a verification page showing your current balance and last game played. The page should sit on one exact address, verify.habanero.co, and the balance should match your casino account. If either is wrong, Habanero says “you may be playing a forged Habanero game” and asks players to report it. It is a check you can run in under a minute.

Habanero also sells operators a “Buy Feature” that lets a player pay a fixed price to go straight to the free games, and a “Super Bet” add-on that raises the base stake to increase the chance of triggering them. Both increase how much is staked per spin, and Habanero’s Solutions page says as much: “Average bet goes up on every title where it’s enabled.” Its responsible gaming page adds that bonus-buy and auto-spin features are removed in markets whose rules require it. If you see them, treat them as a faster way to spend, not a better way to play.

How They Compare With the Bigger Asian Names

Next to PG Soft, both studios are smaller catalogues with a similar audience. The useful difference is what each tells you: PG Soft prints one RTP per game, Habanero prints the whole range a casino can choose from, and Spadegaming’s public RTP information is the hardest of the three to find. For players in Malaysia, where both studios’ games are common in casino lobbies, our Malaysia online casino hub sets out the legal position and how the casinos we reviewed for that market are licensed.

Before You Play Either Studio’s Games

The checks are the same for both studios:

1. Look at the casino’s licence, not the studio’s. Both Malta licences cover the studios’ supply of games. The casino answers under its own licence, which may be far weaker.
2. Open the game’s information screen. For a Habanero slot, compare the RTP there with the options on the studio’s game sheet; if the casino runs the lowest option, you will see it. For Spadegaming, treat a missing figure as unknown.
3. Run Habanero’s authenticity check if a game looks or behaves oddly.
4. Decide your limits first. Set a spending limit and a time limit before the first spin, and stop when you reach either. A very high volatility rating means long runs without a meaningful win are normal.

Online slots are for adults only, 18+ or older where local law sets a higher age. If play has stopped feeling like entertainment, our responsible gambling resources list free, confidential help for each market we cover.