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What's Happened to Online Slots

hughdal

hughdal

Experienced Member
CM Veteran (5yr+)
Joined
Oct 14, 2020
Location
scotland
Been a slot player for best part of 20 years, discovered online slots around 10 years ago. I have some great memories. My £5000 jackpot on a £1 bet, my $3700 on another £1 bet. Chasing bonus's which never hit and chasing other bonus rounds which did hit. I won and lost and enjoyed every moment.

Then, around a year ago the fun ended. Logic tells me it was the reduction in RTP which swept the online slot world and I've tried to adjust to that. I rarely play a slot I haven't researched for the theoretical RTP and the trend is always down. 95% RTP is the norm now and the I've seen some at 93.x%. The obvious result is fewer wins and smaller bonus round. My last 5 bonus rounds wins on a £1 bet have all been under £10. New slot releases can be visually stunning but results are dismal.

My last decent slot win was in Alicante Spain. I played at a bricks and mortar 'casino' in the tourist area. I actually turned 20 Euros in 100 Euros with a bonus round. The attendant I went to to help me cash out. as all the button labels were in Spanish, had never done that before and she'd worked there for 6 months. Reminds me what online slots are like now, we don't know how to win since we never win anymore.

I know there are still some bonus rounds out there, the Casinomeister forum has win posts on a regular basis. My thinking is to go back to the classics like DOA2, at least they have a history of wins. New games are out for me, they are the creation of a greedy provider culture. Nuff said, back to spinning, but not tonight. I don't want to go to bed with another £50 hole in my wallet.

Hughdal
 
A lot of it boils down to slot design; they're just not fun to play, and who wants to work all day and de-stress by playing stressful slots that feel like hard work?

They've lost the charm and engagement needed to keep players wanting to play. A mere decade ago, there were many games that could destroy balances, but by and large, tended to 'give and take', whereas today's slots just focus on attritional, bonus-oriented grinding with little actual value for money.

It's no secret that the decline in RTP has led to led to slot fatigue and a jaded player base, made all the worse with older slots being irreparably altered, whilst classics get strewn to the four winds, never to be seen again. Winner Screenshot used to pepper the forum as many were in on the action, now it's more of a flukey afterthought and ghost town.

But apparently this is the future of slotting (pre-crash), namely, to paraphrase the industry's mantra:

Consume product. Don't ask questions. Get excited for new product :laugh:
 
I am getting disillusioned with crappy low RTP slots, I simply wont play any under 96%.

I have been enjoying some live roulette sessions on the XXXtreme and Red Door versions. 97% RTP and a genuine (all be it still rare) chance of hitting 1000x or more.

I have hit 600x on XXX and 800x on Red Door, and I think I am ahead on both games after many sessions.
 
It's not only a trend of lower RTP due to regulation and taxation, but also a trend to higher volatility and higher max wins. The fact that people these days share their wins, and there are streamers and things means that being able to publicise huge wins is the go-to marketing strategy. Standard gambling psychology.

'Oh, that person hit it big. Maybe I can too'.

Of course, that high volatility means that it's very few lucky ones hitting the big wins, and all the rest getting slammed harder than they used to, but that doesn't stop all the rest from chasing the lucky ones.
 
The phrase that stuck with me was "suitably rare" - where the monster pays existed they were uncommon but not impossible, partly because of the nature of reel-based slots, but also because designers of the day understood taking too much RTP away from the base game could be problematic.

Fast forward, and really the thing that has changed is intensity:
  • the house edges are bigger - 4-5% is now 6-12%
  • "scratch card" slots that ramp volatility to unhealthy levels - something that would be more structured (natural curve) with a genuine reel-based slot
  • and the number of streamers - particularly fraudulent ones - trying to dopamine-trap people with insane wins that either never happened or happened to someone else (such as the replay boards)
A slot like Immortal Romance - a high variance beast of its day - had almost all of the RTP in 500x or less wins (at an educated guess, 95%+ of the 96.86%) - contrast that with some of the modern offerings where the maximum wins alone could be more than that amount, so by the time you traverse the long tail of monster pays you could be seeing 20% or 30% allocated to sub-100x wins... which makes for a very lumpy slot and very bumpy ride!

Another example in numbers:
  • Avalon 2 (another Microgaming 243-way of yesteryear) - 1 in 2.55 billion spins (4 from 10 billion combinations in the base game) for a full screen worth 8000x
  • Scammin' Jars - contains multiple wins bigger than Avalon 2, from a pool size of 1.3 million scripted results. So each 10kx win is worth nearly 0.8% RTP and there are potentially dozens of them (each dozen is 10% RTP)

bamberfishcake said:
A questionable statement, but let's not split hairs, let's call it greed :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
96-97% reduced to 95-96% I could perhaps understand as regulation and taxation (most of which is on GGY anyway, we're not Germany), beyond that it feels like greed. Absolutely no way an online slot needs to function at 88-90% when its land-based counterpart functions at 92-94%.
 
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Game design has definitely taken a turn for the worse, to the detriment of the casual player. Luckily, we still have plenty of older titles to choose from, but many of those have been updated with noticeable differences in gameplay and volatility.

Any suggestion of casinos choosing lower RTP models because of increasing costs belongs in the Rewrite History thread. At the time when it started with Play'n GO and Pragmatic Play leading the charge, casinos were (and still are) booming. Taking industry growth into consideration, the RTP drop was/is all about greed.

p.s. Have I ever mentioned it is a con as well? ? Same title, different payout design?! Another legal wool-pull.
 
bamberfishcake said:
A questionable statement, but let's not split hairs, let's call it greed :thumbsup:
Click to expand...
Haha, while i'm sure there are some cases where that is true, there are many cases it's actually not. Casino's and operators prefer higher RTP's in many instances because it draws more players and keeps players hooked over a longer period, so overall it results in bigger profits, not lower.

However as taxation has increased cost bases, and regulation has put limits on spending (max stakes, spins per second etc), Casino's can no longer squeeze enough play in to allow the higher profits to materialise. This means they cannot offset the higher cost base so the only option left is to lower RTP to increase profitability on the, now, lessened amount of play that is occurring.

This is why you've seen so many Casinos exiting the heavy regulations, such as the UK. It's no longer profitable. If reducing RTP was about greed, they wouldn't exit those markets, they would stay in them and enjoy their juicy profits.
 
We would need to do some serious research to find out for sure, eh :)

Higher RTP does draw more players, more than ever before, and a loyal customer base generates more profit in the long term, but, many reductions came before players started realising, making this point less relevant at the time, as well as before higher taxation and running costs of today.

I get the impression many operations that left the UK market were unfit for business anyway. Not seen many names go that I miss. And many exiting from other areas are most likely in a similar boat. Probably, many didn't like the chance of ludicrous fines under ambiguous legislation. Are the fines relative to how profitable the business is do you know? I get that impression also.

Many of the big names and smaller groups making year-on-year profits are clearly happy to stay. Perhaps it's lowering RTP that has made the difference or, maybe, it's the huge increase in players. I believe it's mostly because of the latter. I also think the boom outweighs the losses from tighter regulation.

From what I saw, this was not a choice made with a loaded gun of spiralling running costs. Many did it because everyone else did and they knew players had no choice. The Kindred FD dived head-first into his new role with a reduction, most likely because there was little or no risk of losing customers when everyone else had already dropped. As a result, they, again, made record profits. I am sure that stroke of genius looks great on his CV. It was a no-brainer for many, I get that.
 
Seems like all slots play like shit nowadays. I started my online slotting journey in 2013. The last couple of years though have been extremely shit. You used to be almost guaranteed to get a bonus/free spin rounds within 100-200 spins, now it may take 500 spins before you get a bonus that pays a fraction of what you've spent.

Also, a lot of the games I really enjoyed playing have vanished completely. Now there's just megaways this and megaways that and a hundred clones of book games.

I'm not even really a big slots guy, probably 70% of my gaming is on video poker.

Then you factor in that most casinos sow you to death if you happen to win something and want to cash out. Meh, maybe it's time to find another hobby.

See Related:
More about slots? Check out this review of All Slots Casino from the team here at Casinomeister.
 
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Jono777 said:
If I had my way, I'd scrap all bonuses (including SUB's), incentives, cash backs, etc. etc etc and simply offer 96%+ slots across the board.
Click to expand...
It doesn't have to be either/or... we used to have both, now we have neither. While there's a lot of protesting that RTPs "have" to be cut, there doesn't seem to be a constructive conversation on how much they need to be cut - the big operators are still announcing mammoth profits so it's clearly not as big of a problem as they're protesting... although the burden of bureaucracy will disproportionately impact the smaller operators.
 
jasonuk said:
It doesn't have to be either/or... we used to have both, now we have neither. While there's a lot of protesting that RTPs "have" to be cut, there doesn't seem to be a constructive conversation on how much they need to be cut - the big operators are still announcing mammoth profits so it's clearly not as big of a problem as they're protesting... although the burden of bureaucracy will disproportionately impact the smaller operators.
Click to expand...
Yep, there used to be bonuses with low wagering, decent cashback and all the bells and whistles while RTP's were on high settings.

I'm not smart enough to know what happened, but gaming isn't the same as it was even 5 years ago.
 
slotmaster said:
holy crap guys! Just had a very good session on Mr Vegas, slots paying like the ole days and playtime! Played 5 hours ish and came out ahead! Have some screenies to post shortly. :)

What a nice feeling to actually get some playing time and have fun and win a bit.
Click to expand...

Lends us your time machine will you please. There is no way what you describe happens anymore.
 
Jono777 said:
Lends us your time machine will you please. There is no way what you describe happens anymore.
Click to expand...
haha, tried to do what we were all talking about on here lately, started off small bets, .20-.30 cents, then did get some hits so went to the usual .40-.80 on some slots, then flowers and Danger High Voltage were HOT so went $1 and even up to $3 bets for a short period of time on those but went down quick a couple times too.
 
slotmaster said:
holy crap guys! Just had a very good session on Mr Vegas, slots paying like the ole days and playtime! Played 5 hours ish and came out ahead! Have some screenies to post shortly. :)

What a nice feeling to actually get some playing time and have fun and win a bit.
Click to expand...

I've had nothing but burn on Mr Vegas. I can't win a thing on that site, and not once have I been in profit. Funny that.
 
I cannot start off on any smaller bets, they don't go any lower.

My luck is on the floor and RTP lower than that.

Never seem such a blatant rip off load of garbage in all my life, it is simply not random slotting, it is pure bullshit.

There is no 'D' in Bonanza and never will be unless you make videos, there are only 3 reels on DoA and Book of Dead has a very fitting name.

Rant over.
 
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True, never got the D in bonanza today. :)
 
The biggest clue that something has changed is the fact that even the supposedly lower variance slots are playing like the high variance of yesteryear.

Bonus rounds seem to have all but vanished.

Remember when 150-200 spins was deemed to be an unlucky session if you didn’t hit a bonus within them??

Remember the days of an actual base game??

Games like Immortal Romance, Finer Reels etc were deemed high variance monsters. They seem like a cake walk when looking back ?

True, peak wins were probably of lower value, but somehow it was more enjoyable having a balance that you could often recycle for multiple sessions. You could play for hours too without stupid pop ups and constant reminders about how long you’ve been playing for. So, on the rare occasions you do manage to preserve a balance you get bombarded with that crap…the irony being it’s at a time you least need an RG reminder. Go figure.

The whole set up is more hostile to players now…from RG crap right through to game mechanics and payouts.
 
I already posted this over here:

NetEnt: Wild Worlds - WTF??? - Casinomeister Forum

However it probably belongs better in this thread. It's basically my 'Why I've decided to quit online slots' post.

One thing I didn't include was that on balance, with things as they've become online, I'd rather just have a punt on the slots that can be found in our local pubs. For sure the percentages aren't great (92-94%) but they're really low volatility with a max pay of 250x/500x, and I'm happy enough to lob a few £20 notes at them and try my luck on £1 spins.

Obviously they're a losing proposition overall, but I've had quite a few decent wins on them over the years, and they remove all of the ballache and hassle associated with playing online these days too.

---------------

The thing for me is there are other activities I like to do in my spare time, not anything particularly noble or interesting, but I love playing videogames (I've got basically all the consoles and a high-spec gaming PC), or watching something on the telly, or even just reading a book.

The limiting factor for me, honestly, is not money but time. As an adult bloke with a full time job and family and friends and whatnot, I only have so much spare time, so I like to do something with that spare time that I find enjoyable and presents the minimum of friction.

I like a gamble, I like a punt, but there is a threshold it can cross into being disagreeable or a pain in the arse where I will just stop doing it, and say, 'You know what, fuck it, I'll play a videogame instead'. (Or something else.)

Online slots are starting on a sticky wicket in that you're not 'buying' anything in the traditional sense, there is no product that you own once you've handed over the cash, you're paying for the excitement of having a gamble via what are (hopefully.....) well made games with high production values that are able to engage you as a player, you know, like the ones Microgaming used to make. Of course you can win some money along the way, which is the other big selling point, but when there's a permanent house edge of ~5%, one doesn't need to be a mathematical genius to work out where that one will ultimately end up - so in my books, online casinos have to be 'selling' something pretty good to justify that.

In the last few weeks I've started playing Warcraft Rumble on my tablet, it's a fun little game where you put together a cute army of 'minis' and go up against either AI opponents in campaign style missions, or other human beings in PvP matches. There's a lot of pay to win in there with the game throwing up obvious barriers that spending some money will get you through, and to date I've spent a modest chunk of cash on it, but honestly, at least I feel like I'm getting something for my money, even if it is only a digital collection of (endearing!) little digital units that don't even remotely exist outside the game. (And which will most likely get turned off at some point.)

Compare and contrast with VS, who despite taking money off me over many years (and looking at my lifetime account stats, they've had a solid chunk of cash off me), have seen fit to pull the rug from under me on a nice little one-liner that was making money for them, just not enough money, apparently - so they decided to stick the better part of another 70% onto their house edge, and not tell me about it when I loaded the game in.

Against that backdrop, and the increasingly player-hostile landscape of online slots in general (some of it regulatory, but an awful lot of it from the 'industry' itself), I find myself over that threshold where I just don't want to do it any more, I don't feel it's a worthy recipient of either my time, or my money.

There is an element of 'straw that broke the camel's back here', obviously, Double Fancy 7s getting nerfed hasn't immediately and violently made me throw my toys out of the pram whilst wailing 'NOT FAIR NOT FAIR NOT FAIR'. As many members here at CM will personally attest to, the world of online slots and online casinos today is very different (in a bad way!) to what it was ten years ago.

Even places where the casino and the games are totally solid, such as 3Dice, what with the crypto faff (and expense), or trying to sign up for something like Mifinity which fucked up on the registration process and left me in a weird sort of limbo where I can't get access to my account without emailing a support address, has now left me thinking 'I'm not sure I can be bothered with this any more', I've got pretty slick at buying and transferring crypto now, but it's still a lot of hoops to jump through, with multiple authenticators and verification steps just to get a deposit into a casino, and using Revolut because HSBC decided they didn't like crypto and either stopped my card working (debit card) or told me off for 'withdrawing cash' (credit card). The latter showed up as a negative indicator on my otherwise spotless credit report, hence the move to Revolut.

It's not the end of the world, and in many regards it was fun whilst it lasted, but as with many things in life, there is a point at which the correct decision is to walk away, and do something else.
 
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Well over last year I would say well up on slots.

Plenty playtime and withdrawals. Guess it all depends on the slots you play and where you play them.

Use Lottomart most and in profit there. But more importantly get lots of playtime.

Made first deposit in ages at VS on Thursday. Simple £20 deposit with 100% bonus that gets added as you play it.

Normally end up forfeiting it but this time cleared the full wagering also got XP for battles for full month and WB for Friday . Not to mention hours of play and a nice £450 withdrawal. Mind you a £420 win on the new sticky bandits slot from 20p bet helped.

Also had few good wins at Paddy Power over last week on that 2wild2die slot.

Like I say maybe it's just the games I play but I find deposits last same as always. Some lose others win with good playtime. But then again i mainly stay away from most megaways slots except diamond mine 2 which I do okay on. Also mostly stay away from Pragmatic and slots like dead or alive as they are boring and unless you get wildline just eat balance.
 
I much prefer the old days like 2008 to - 2016 Friday nights taking the 100% bonus match at most casinos like the Everymatrix brands and playing the old Netents, Microgaming etc many times I managed to cashout between 1k - 2k you couldn't win huge but often you got a reasonable cashout, nowdays they are all blatantly scripted game mechanics that you can shout out what's going to happen and be correct 99% of the time...I seen one person post on another well known forum that they have had over "20 max wins this year" as in 2023 I have played for over 20 years i have done millions of spins and wagered millions of ££££ and never had a max win on any slot, nowadays it's just scripted spins (want a great example of this play the new Gargantoonz slot, watch how many times you are on 15,16,17,18,19 and you just need 1 more connection from the drop down of new symbols and it misses 99% of the time, every now and again it will drop 2 wilds in side by side and miss 99% of the time) oh and go try the new Coba game from Elk, 1 symbol away from reaching the meter fill up and just need the correct symbol to drop down and connect it will miss 99% of the time in the same way as Gargantoonz, Golden Glyph games are the same, they are clearly heavily weighted to keep needed a symbol hit from new appearing symbols but miss 99% of the time oh and shit paying bonus rounds, dead spins and base games, I would go back to 2010 - 2014 in a heartbeat.
 
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For me though, the issue is with how adversarial the relationship has come to feel. I started this thread about playing at VS, and documented how, if you're prepared to have a poke around, you can still find a decent library of slots with solid RTPs and non-crazy variance.

Depositing at Videoslots again, because at least it works - Casinomeister Forum

I'm not saying it's impossible to have a decent experience, but when as a player you go to the time and effort to find some games you're comfortable with, and share that with other folks here at CM in case it's useful information for them too, and off the back of that VS go to the trouble to pull the 97% maths model of a game and replace it with the 95% maths model (a near 70% increase in the house edge) - for me personally, that's the point at which I decide to get off the train.

It's a toxic dynamic, and I won't encourage it with my money, the 97% version of Double Fancy 7s made a profit for VS as an absolute mathematical certainty, but someone made the decision that it should make more. That's fine, as a business that's their prerogative, but as a player it's also my choice to decide I've had enough, and spend my spare time and money on something else.

If other people treated you like that, you'd cut them out of your life. I've decided to do that with online casinos.
 
Jono777 said:
Lends us your time machine will you please. There is no way what you describe happens anymore.
Click to expand...
It does actually.
I made a deposit at VS in July which I was still playing with in December when I made another deposit to claim another 100% bonus.
Over that time span I have withdrawn 7x my deposited amounts - and I am still playing with the residue.
I have no idea how I have gone on so long, except I did have 2 massive wins in August (1616x on Road Rage & 1754x on Sugar Rush) plus lots of smaller good wins.

During the same time, I tried MrV... and my deposits there disappeared in a POOF of smoke :(

KK
 
That's because Mr. Vegas runs the 'steal my balance' RTP. Play'n Go is 91% the last time I checked.

I don't have an account there anymore, can anyone verify?

Nate
 
IMO, bonus buy features broke the games. It's been downhill ever since. Coupled with the fact that most casinos have slots on middle or low rtp settings.

And you can instantly see it when playing on lower rtp settings. Take book of dead for instance. Within 50 spins without even looking at the rtp setting you know if you're playing on lower settings. It's instantly noticeable.

Everything's worse for the player nowadays. Fewer and shittier bonuses, higher wr, lower rtp settings, bonus buy games. Then if you happen to win you're going to have to show every bank transaction you ever did the last 6 months. And some casinos ask for stuff they have no legal grounds to ask for like third party information etc.

It's a shit show, but still we play. :axeman2:
 
pekka55 said:
It’s a shit show, but still we play. :axeman2:
Click to expand...

I wonder for how much longer though?

I have cut my deposits down by around 75% and quite frankly I can’t be arsed with it anymore.

They say, “when the fun stops, stop” Well, I don’t see any fun in playing against underhanded providers who are manipulating games on the fly to rob you blind. Predatory programming in BTG’s case.

The volume of cash and players is on the decrease. Players are signing up to Gamstop in their droves and the ones who are left are being shafted to compensate for it.
 
good thing about crypto you dont need to cashout , you just send money from casino to casino find games they run on high RTP
 

Or not, as the case may be. (Taken from the latest issue of Private Eye, which takes a keen interest in the number of MPs who lobby on behalf of the gambling 'industry'.)

1706448332312.webp
 
Some of us don't. Games up for me in the UK. Zero enjoyment and even the crypto sites are rubbish as well. Think its the change to these ridiculously volatile games that's the problem.
 


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