Some players will just not accept the truth we share about slot machines and how they work. Here’s another recent example:
Brian mentioned tightening the slot machines is not a thing. Yes it is. Our locals, when new machines come in; at first, are back to normal (before COVID), then they revert to being tight (low payouts and rarely a bonus game) since reopening. I can tell that is what is perhaps going on in the US, as the bonus games are also few and far between these days.
Christel G.
We see this one a lot – people think casinos pay less after the shutdowns from COVID than before. But it’s a misunderstanding about what changes actually happened. So no, Brian is 100 percent correct.
Casinos were more aggressive in swapping out their machines after the reopenings because of a variety of fresh data points that indicated they would perform better than their floors did in the past by making these changes.
These new games are designed with bonuses that are much harder to hit than games that came before it. Bonuses used to perhaps occur every 50 spins, and now are more like every 120 spins on average – that’s more than twice as long between bonuses, and keep in mind that’s an average!
All of the various casinos required to report data have reported data after reopening that’s generally consistent with what they offered before the pandemic for payouts. So you’re able to verify this in other ways as well.
Don’t take our word for it. Here’s the average slot paybacks on the strip for the 12 months ending June 2019 and December 2023:
- 2019: 7.78%
- 2023: 8.01%
The difference between the two are insignificant overall; the assertion that bonuses have been ratcheted down when the payback percentage changes are not showing up in reporting doesn’t work out, so it means something else is causing a change in the bonus frequency on newer games.
On top of this, the frequency of bonuses won’t help you know if a machine pays better or worse. In fact, game makers will many times aim to keep the bonus frequency roughly equal regardless of payback level, because the frequency of bonus is part of what makes a game feel like a game. Where they’ll tweak the payouts may be the frequency of bigger line hits, or the average expected payout of a bonus.
Players think they can “tell” what is happening from a few sessions, but with slots hitting their expected payouts across millions of spins, there’s often times other factors at play that players simply don’t know about or understand, and that’s what we think is the case here, Christel. Casinos aren’t tweaking the payouts – the games are simply getting harder and more expensive.
