Editorial Policy

Last updated: 26 April 2026

This page sets out how a Fortunica Casino UK review goes from "we should look at this casino" to a published page on the site. It exists for two reasons. The first is accountability: if you can see the process, you can hold us to it. The second is honesty about the limits of the process: we do a lot of things well and a few things imperfectly, and pretending otherwise would undermine the whole exercise.

Editorial principles

Four principles drive what gets published on the site, and they are listed in priority order — when two principles conflict, the higher-numbered one yields.

  1. Factual accuracy. Every claim about an operator — bonus amount, wagering, withdrawal speed, licence number, payment methods — is verified before publication. Unverified claims are not published, even when "everyone knows" they're true.
  2. Independence from commercial pressure. The 8-criterion rating system applies the same weights to every operator regardless of partnership status. Commercial pressure that pushes against the rating loses. The operational mechanics of that firewall are described below.
  3. Transparency with readers. Authors are named. Verification dates are visible. Affiliate relationships are disclosed (full disclosure on /affiliate-disclosure). Methodology is documented (/how-we-test, /how-we-rate). When something on the site is wrong, we say what was wrong and what we changed.
  4. Currency. An accurate review from 18 months ago is worth less than an accurate review from 8 weeks ago. We re-test on a published cadence; the review tells you when it was last verified.

Six-stage editorial process

Stage 1 — Casino selection

We do not review every UK-facing casino. The selection criteria are: an active licence from a regulator we recognise (UKGC, MGA, Gibraltar, Curaçao under the new licence regime, Isle of Man); availability for British players; relevance to the kind of player who reads the site; absence of unresolved regulator action; absence of a serious unresolved complaint pattern on AskGamblers, ThePogg or Casino Guru. Operators that fail those checks either don't get reviewed, or get reviewed with the failure named explicitly. Unlicensed operators do not appear on the site as recommended options — at most they appear as warnings.

Stage 2 — Real testing

The author who is going to write the review carries out the testing personally. Real money. Real KYC. Real bonus activation. Real wagering. Real withdrawal request through at least two payment methods. The 20-point testing checklist is on the How We Test page in detail. A complete test takes 3 to 10 working days depending on KYC speed and withdrawal turnaround.

Test deposits are funded out of our editorial budget (the team's own money in early days, reimbursed against affiliate revenue once the site started earning). We do not accept "free" test accounts from operators because they are usually fast-tracked and unrepresentative of what a regular player encounters.

Stage 3 — Drafting

The reviewer writes the review from their own testing notes. Reviews are not commissioned to outside writers based on second-hand information. Each review follows the structural template shared across the site — opening summary with verified figures, deep dive on the welcome bonus, breakdown of ongoing promotions, game-catalogue analysis, payment-method walk-through, mobile and live testing, RG toolkit assessment, FAQ — but the reviewer has full control over emphasis, tone and conclusions inside that structure. There is no "house line" on which casinos are good or bad.

Stage 4 — Fact-checking

Before a review goes live, every numeric claim and every name is cross-referenced against a primary source. Specifically:

Where the author's personal testing experience contradicts the operator's published claim, the testing experience wins in the review and we say what we found.

Stage 5 — Publication

A published review carries an author byline (with a link to the author profile), the publication date, the most recent verification date, and the rating produced by the 8-criterion rubric on How We Rate. Schema markup on the page declares the author, the rating, the publication date and the verification date in machine-readable form so search engines and AI Overviews can present the metadata accurately.

Stage 6 — Updates and re-tests

Reviews are not "set and forget". The cadence is:

Commercial firewall

The way the editorial team is shielded from commercial pressure is operational, not philosophical. Specifics:

Corrections process

Errors happen. The thing that distinguishes a credible site from an unreliable one is what happens after. Our corrections process:

  1. Reader or internal flag arrives by email or via the contact form.
  2. The editor on rota acknowledges within 48 working hours.
  3. The error is verified against a primary source. If verified, the page is updated within 7 working days.
  4. The "Last updated" date at the top of the page is bumped.
  5. Material corrections (anything that changes a rating, a bonus number, a withdrawal claim, or a licence detail) are accompanied by an inline correction note: "Updated [date]: corrected [what was corrected and from what to what]".
  6. We do not silently rewrite history. If a review was wrong, that gets acknowledged in the correction note.

Reviews that become outdated because the casino has changed substantially (closed, lost a licence, been acquired by a new operator) are flagged with a banner at the top of the page rather than deleted. Deletion would lose the historical record.

Contributor standards

Every contributor — staff or freelance — is required to:

Oliver, as Senior Editor, signs off every review before it goes live. The buck stops at the masthead.

Questions about a specific review, a correction request, or a methodology query — write to [email protected]. The full set of who-to-contact-when is on /contact-us.