Really bad dark UI patterns
Really bad dark UI patterns
I was checking out this casino the other day and I randomly won a $500 jackpot bonus, 1x wager. One they have built-in, I didn't enter any contest of whatever, it seems to be triggered randomly when you play. I got the notification, clicked on it and it opened a popup modal. Now, I don't know how many of you are familiar with how UIs work (or are supposed to work), but in a popup modal, the button 'cancel' is almost always used to close the modal.
This popup had the options to activate the bonus, and next there was a 'Cancel' button in normal grey. I saw the bonus and thought I'd activate it once I played with the funds I already had deposited, to avoid the infamous wager patterns casinos love to trap you in with these bonuses (It didn't say that bonus was 1x wager on the popup) so I absent-mindedly clicked cancel because that's what I'm used to click to close modals. As soon as I clicked, it canceled the bonus, without any type of warning or request of confirmation.
FYI, in normal practice, any destructive button is usually red and most importantly requires a confirmation step, and what they've done is called a dark pattern. Sort of like when apps hide membership cancellation buttons, except this is way worse.
Sent them an email for explanation, they first tried to say I canceled it after activating it and after also clicking on a confirmation warning. Both weren't true, as I never activated it and they don't have any confirmation step from the popup, only in the bonus page. When I made them notice that, they said regardless of where in the website, if I canceled it they can't reactivate it. Awesome customer experience.
After my emails, at least they changed the Cancel button in the popup to 'Forfeit bonus'. While still not showing any confirmation step anyway.
So yeah, nothing too bad at the end of the day because it wasn't my money, but I believe this says a lot about what these people might do. Just a warning.
18 de marzo de 2026
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