Slot machine developer GameCo confirmed Monday that CEO Blaine Graboyes was no longer with the company following his gaming license denial last week by the Nevada Gaming Commission.
In a statement provided by a company spokesman, GameCo “will be appointing a new CEO in due course.”
In the interim, leadership for the small Las Vegas-based gaming developer had been assumed by GameCo’s current management team – Chief Financial Officer Art Hamilton and Rich Maryyanek, the head of global business development.
“GameCo’s senior team has been instrumental in the company’s success to date in driving forward a mission to create new casino gaming experiences,” the spokesman said in the statement.
The Nevada Gaming Commission, following a more than four-hour hearing last Thursday, voted 4-1 to deny Graboyes a one-year limited gaming license, which had been recommended two weeks earlier by the Gaming Control Board.
Gaming commissioners focused on a nearly 300-page investigative report concerning the two years he spent as the consultant/CEO of Ohio-based Beyond Gaming from 2012 to 2014.
The company was liquidated in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy but a former executive accused Graboyes of engineering the bankruptcy and using Beyond’s intellectual property to start up GameCo. The Control Board’s recommendation would have allowed Graboyes to provide answers and to fully review the findings in the investigative report.
Graboyes said GameCo’s compliance committee had reviewed the findings and he had only read the report in the two weeks following the Control Board meeting. He told the Gaming Commission some of the information in the report was incomplete and took portions of emails and other internal documents out of context.
Graboyes’ two-limited license expired on the day of the Gaming Commission hearing and he was seeking an unencumbered license. Control Board members said earlier he cleared up tax liabilities, lawsuit issues, and liens that came up during his 2019 suitability hearing.
Over the weekend, GameCo had removed Graboyes’ biography from the company’s website.
GameCo currently offers casinos five slot machine games that have a skill-based component where players can win additional jackpots. The company has 16 games currently in the field – four slot machines at Choctaw Durant Casino in Oklahoma and 12 in Nevada, divided between the Atlantis in Reno, and the Park MGM and MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
GameCo employs 31 people, primarily at its Las Vegas headquarters.
In the statement, the spokesman said the company’s board of directors, Chairman Robert Montgomery, Fifth Street Gaming CEO Seth Schorr, and private investment executive Adam Rosenberg, would “provide further guidance to the executive search process.”
Howard Stutz is the executive editor of CDC Gaming Reports. He can be reached at hstutz@cdcgaming.com. Follow @howardstutz on Twitter.
