One of the founding principles of Flip The Switch is we want to source accurate information for players about how slots, casinos, and related topics work. That includes taking your questions and asking the experts at various slot manufacturers how certain aspects of slots work. One player wonders why we should be so trusting:
I hear you talk about random number generators (RNGs) all the time and FYI there is no TRUE RNG, because the games have to be programmed, and whoever wrote the programming for that game was a human, and would have left their DNA in the programming, whether intentional or not.
Please do not believe everything the game manufacturer tells you. Why would they tell someone like you or more all their secrets?
There’s a couple of fair questions in here, and let’s start with the topic of the RNG. While we, like many in the industry, use RNG as shorthand, it’s really a PRNG – pseudo-random number generator. It is human coded, but it approximates randomness to the point where it does the job it needs to do – ensure an equal chance of any given outcome happening on that next spin.
But the manufacturer doesn’t get to just unilaterally say it works and no one verifies it. All slot machine hardware and software goes through third-party lab testing. Each jurisdiction where machines are put on casino floors tells manufacturers which lab or labs they’ll accept certification from, and the companies spend a significant amount of resources getting their games certified for various markets, which confirms they meet the various regulations for that market.
The third party testing conducts billions of spins to make sure the randomness is doing what it needs to do to ensure a fair slot machine. If a machine fails testing it’s up to the manufacturer to resolve the issues. In this way there’s a “trust, but verify” model that ensures that what the slot makers say should happen in the long run actually does.
To your point about trusting slot manufacturers, this is a highly regulated industry. Should it be even suspected that something untoward is going on, it could be a very expensive issue for the manufacturer. Companies may stop buying their products, regulators may have their machines pulled, and their business could vanish pretty rapidly.
With that in mind, caution and care tends to be the order of the day – these companies are not going to take unnecessary risks or try to slip something by regulators to make a few extra bucks. In the case of giving out bad information to hide secrets, that alone, if found to be the case, could raise suspicions and questions in the eyes of customers and regulators – so why take that chance?
Another thing to consider is how they succeed. In most cases the game makers make their money by selling or renting their hardware and software – the actual profit/loss is only rarely a part of the calculation. So they don’t even necessarily have a big financial benefit in players’ wins or losses. There’s no real incentive to fake the way the RNG works, for instance, because they don’t make money off of that in most cases.
In the exceptions where there is some form of revenue participation, it tends to be connected to those machines with wide area progressives, where the slot manufacturer is paying out the large jackpot, and that revenue helps cover that expense.
Finally, while the gaming industry has some private elements to it, generally speaking when a representative gives us answers to our questions, it’s not because they are trying to purposely misdirect us.
Generally if there’s an area they can’t or won’t cover, they’ll simply tell us so. There can be various reasons for this – a game’s not out, a topic wades into waters where they have patents or intellectual property to protect, etc. But if they give us an answer, they’re telling us how they do things, and they tend to do so to try to help demystify what’s going on.
The idea that a site like this can exist, and that the companies are willing to share what’s going on, is a great step forward in bringing some daylight to how this all works, and also bringing manufacturers closer to you, the player. Between regulations, third party testing, and the companies being willing to share a bit about how things work, we have every reason to trust the information they’re providing is accurate.
Have a question? Submit yours here!
