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How do I sign up for BC's Game Break self-exclusion, including PlayNow?
How BC's Game Break self-exclusion works — casinos, community gaming centres and PlayNow online — how to enrol, what it covers, and what to do the same day.
Self-exclusion is the single most effective thing you can do in the first 24 hours, because it takes the decision out of the 3 a.m. version of you and hands it to a system that doesn’t negotiate.
What Game Break is
Game Break is BC’s voluntary self-exclusion program, run through GameSense. Enrolling excludes you from BC casinos and community gaming centres and from PlayNow, the province’s online gambling site, for the period you choose. GameSense’s own page explains enrolment, the periods available and exactly what is and isn’t covered — read that page rather than any summary, including this one, before you sign.
How to enrol
You can enrol through GameSense; the process asks you to choose a period and confirms what venues and platforms the exclusion applies to. Do it before the next payday, not after.
The same-day companions
Self-exclusion covers regulated BC gambling. It doesn’t touch offshore sites, apps outside the province, or the bank. So, on the same day: ask your bank for a gambling-transaction block (a one-sentence request), install a gambling-blocking app on the phone, and tell one person. The first-72-hours guide has the words for each.
Then the actual help
Free, provincially funded problem-gambling counselling exists in BC, alongside GA meetings that cost nothing. Tell us once and a navigator confirms the options that fit — most of them free — and makes one introduction only when you say yes.
Sources
Last checked 2026-09-10. Rules change; the provincial line or the program's own intake is the final word. Spot an error? Tell us.