This is what i’m seeing quite strongly, most sites using unedited versions of the reviews have taken quite a drop, out of the top 20 in google for one search term there’s only 1 site using unedited reviews and content. Some of the older programs will have 1000’s of affiliates, now if a few hundread of them are using unedited reviews especially the long ones then this could easily trigger a filter especially now they have and still are tweaking things.
You are absolutely bang on there..Google has a very sophisticated dupe filter. Backlinks are still very important…and more so is their quality.
The land based casinos will do well ..their sites could be “aged” , the backlinks various from all over the place..and all relevant, with very few reciprocal link exchanges…which unless done “3 way” are a waste of time imho.