Now that we have confirmation that jackpot handpays will be a larger number now (and growing with inflation in the future), the question for some turns to how that may impact the games we play:
Will the higher “jackpot threshold” affect the payout of slot machines?
Candice L.
Our take is that overall payback percentage ranges won’t change, and casinos will continue to set them similarly to how they do now. But we expect some tweaks to some of the “rules” that game makers use to determine certain prizes as a result of this.
With the previous threshold having been the same for about 50 years, we saw some decisions in various game designs that likely were chosen as a result of the former $1,200 limit. For example:
- The most obvious was the $1,199 prize on the Willie Nelson slot machine purposefully awarded to be just under the threshold.
- Some other slots attempted to design around the jackpot limit, such as one slot that awarded a series of wheel spins instead of one monolithic prize to ensure each win was under the jackpot threshold.
- The design of Lightning Link and Dragon Link leading to lower denomination maxed out majors at $1,000 was likely a purposeful choice for at least some percentage of wins that included one to not reach the jackpot amount. (Of course, how much a player was betting, and where it was awarded, would be involved in whether that would ultimately be avoided.)
- Many Major jackpot progressives on other slots, particularly lower denomination games, had starting points (usually somewhere between $500 and $800) that often kept them under the jackpot threshold by themselves, but even then could certainly grow past the point of a jackpot if not hit for long enough. This could make them potentially one that some players would chase just to have a shot at a jackpot handpay.
With the threshold now being higher, we could see manufacturers adjusting scenarios that make a $1,500 or above win more likely while trying to keep it under that $2,000 threshold.
Of course, this sort of change would just continue to be a knob turn towards bigger wins less often, aka higher volatility, something which we’ve also discussed around here recently as part of how slots have changed in the past 10 years.
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