Sweden orders immediate ban on Immortal Snail’s Duel.com over continued access to Swedish players

Sweden’s gambling regulator, Spelinspektionen, has issued an immediate prohibition order against Immortal Snail LLC, the offshore operator behind duel.com. For PSPs and acquiring teams, the point is familiar: if a site keeps Swedish-language content live and Swedish users can still reach it, the regulator will treat that as active market targeting.

1. Spelinspektionen said the ban was imposed in the interests of consumer protection because Duel.com continues to make its services available to Swedish consumers without a local licence. The operator runs the site under a licence issued by the Anjouan Gaming Authority.
2. The regulator said Immortal Snail had been unwilling to remove Swedish-language content from the platform, which it views as relevant when assessing whether gambling services are being actively directed at consumers in a particular market. In plain terms: if the language stays, the market exposure stays visible.
3. Sweden’s authority also questioned the company’s approach to restricting access. Immortal Snail referred to IP-blocking Sweden, but Spelinspektionen said it found no evidence of measures to stop Swedish customers from accessing the platform through alternative means, and that even the limited safeguards discussed by the company had not been fully implemented.
4. Spelinspektionen specifically said that “the Swedish currency SEK and Swedish as a language still appear when logging in from a Swedish IP address” and that it had noted continued Swedish-language marketing of duel.com. For compliance teams, that is exactly the sort of evidence regulators use when deciding whether an offshore operator is still targeting the local market.
5. The Anjouan side of the story is also under scrutiny. The source notes that the Anjouan Gaming Authority claims to be governed by the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority on the Indian Ocean island under Comoros law, while the Comoros government denies this and says it intends to take legal action over what it describes as an unauthorised licensing regime, as cited by The Guardian.

The practical issue here is not only the Swedish order itself, but the enforcement gap that offshore operators keep exploiting. Regulators across multiple jurisdictions have long struggled to stop sites from continuing to operate after penalties, warnings, or cease-and-desist orders.