Atlantic Lottery Corporation announced on Friday that it is giving up on its $8.7 million gamble on GeoSweep, recouping it off as a loss.

The lottery corporation invested in the British company Geonomics in 2011 with the firm creating a geography-based online lottery for the Atlantic region.

However, as unsatisfactory sales greeted the game where buyers were asked to purchase square on a map of Atlantic Canada.

The location-based online lottery game offered players the chance to win a top prize of $250,000, with a secondary drawing for the chance to win a $1,000 daily guarantee prize. It differs from traditional numbers-based lottery games by offering players a choice of geographic blocks from a map of Atlantic Canada, which are then drawn instead of numbers.