Some slot machines seem to come and go quickly. Others stick around for seemingly decades. So it’s understandable why today’s question was sent in to us:
I have heard that the return to player is set to a certain percentage over the life of the slot machine but my question is how do they know what the life of the machine is? Or have I misunderstood this return to player concept?
Del A.
Probably a more accurate statement would be “over the long term” as opposed to the (open ended, uncertain) life of a slot machine. The more spins taken on a slot, the more likely a slot will converge on its expected return to player.
The reality is that slots will often approach, but not necessarily perfectly reach, its expected return to player, because the randomness does introduce some variance.
Slots with a short term on the casino floor may not get as close as one that’s been out there for years, but if you zoom out a level, casinos generally have hundreds, if not thousands, of machines, set to similar payback levels based on what they want to make as a business. In that totality, there will still be some variation month to month or even year to year, but not very much, and that’s more what matters.
If a game is so far off the mark, and there’s no easy explanation like someone won a million dollars on the first day it was active, it could be a sign of an issue that needs addressing by a manufacturer, but, while possible, those situations are rare.
That’s because before a machine is released, there’s third party lab testing and validation that puts a game through billions of test spins to see if it comes out where it should. And gaming commissions generally require third-party lab verification as part of their own certification process before giving game makers the OK to release their slot in that state.
So while return to player is a long run goal, the ability for casinos to have hundreds or thousands of games each working towards that target generally evens out the individual ups and downs of a single machine in a small window of time. And if a game is removed, it’s often because players aren’t taking to it or have moved on from it moreso than how far away it happens to be from its long term target.
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