Published on 29th May 2012 by Becky Mosley

The Hindu community is reportedly unhappy with Playtech’s newly-released game Lakshimi Gold, labelling it as “highly inappropriate”.

The wild symbol in the game is the Hindu deity Ganesh: Players lining him up five times on an active payline will receive a jackpot payout of 10,000 coins – and the game uses the sacred cow as another symbol.

The bonus symbol in the 25 line, 5 reel game is Lakshimi herself, and is believed to have caused the most offence – and there’s a hymn to her played whilst free spins are taking place to add insult to injury, using classical Indian instruments like the sitar and the tabla.

Laskshimi, unsurprisingly, is the goddess of good fortune and beauty, also known as ‘world-mother’, and is familiar to non-Hindu players due to her six arms; Ganesh is worshipped as the god of wisdom and remover of obstacles and is invoked before any major earthly undertaking, and is also recognisable to those outside the faith with four arms and an elephant’s head.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, President of the Universal Society of Hinduism, has asked Playtech to apologize to the Hindu community and remove the game from its sites to avoid upsetting devotees.

The game has been rolled out on Casino Tropez, Playtech’s flagship casino and the first site to offer any brand new games developed by the company – and at present it’s still there, however whether it will reach other Playtech sites or even be removed from all of them remains to be seen, with no official comment from Playtech as yet.