The concept of a slot paying back less than your bet back is called a false win. It’s quite common on slot machines nowadays, although in the days of less lines and three reels, it was much more rare. One player wondered whether it should even be allowed:
I watched Brian bet $30.00 a spin and he would win $2.00. Do slot machine manufacturers have gaming commission regulations regarding payouts. Why is a $2 win an equation on a high dollar bet ? Why do you not win at the very least the amount you bet?
Christine N.
Gaming regulations focus more on the overall payback of a slot machine, and not so much the various ways it can get there. As such, false wins aren’t against the rules, as long as the machine they’re on delivers the intended payback it’s designed to give over the long term.
That $30 spin and $2 payback isn’t any different than a 30 cent spin and a 2 cent payback, so the size of the bet isn’t really involved here either. It’s more how slots have historically worked, and evolved.
When earlier slots had 1, 3 or 5 paylines, they often just by the nature of not having many chances to win would give your bet back or more. But even on earlier slots, a single cherry might pay 2 credits, for instance. So the concept of a 2 credit payout has been around awhile.
Now switch to a model where there’s 20 lines, 50 lines, all ways pays, and sometimes two symbols could still pay 2 credits. But the bet is higher because there’s more lines to pay. So now it’s not your bet back but a false win.
Over time false wins can be helpful because you can win something more often than if slot makers were forced to have payouts that started with your bet back. As players many of us find games that don’t payout often to be punishing, so false wins can help take the edge off.
It may feel insulting when looked at from that direction, but they have a direct impact on how a slot feels, including not feeling so stingy because it has to meet the level of a bet back to register. But there are definitely games out there that are not so lopsided as 2 credits against 30 bet, so we can also opt for games that don’t have that sort of moment as well.
This reminds us of when players hated the concept of 0 bonuses, so WMS (which has since been acquired by Light & Wonder) decided to introduce the Bonus Guarantee – 5x or 10x your bet was the standard for them. But players then hated bonus guarantees because it rang a loud bell and showed a big logo confirming that bonus was lousy.
Over time, they softened the blow, first with a smaller logo, then not one at all, but the feature is still around on some of Light & Wonder’s newer games that come from the WMS lineage.
But the other thing it created was the bonus wasn’t as easy to get, because now there was a payout floor, and a decently high one at that. Lightning Link only guarantees you 2x with the trigger, by comparison.
So this is also a scenario of be careful what you wish for – having to win at least your bet back would make for a different feeling game in some ways, and whether we as players would like that may differ.
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