Pragmatic slots, and the twelve returns one maker’s name does not settle

1

The four things a maker’s name does settle

Start with what is genuinely established when a reel carries this maker’s name, because it is not nothing and this card is not an attack on a studio. Four things follow, and each is sourced.

The first is corporate: account 56015 on the regulator’s public register carries this entity, at an address in Gibraltar, with one licence and five remote activities on it, every one of them active, and Gambling Software, the activity covering the supply of games to casinos, held since 30 January 2020 the register entry itself. The second is that a figure exists to be looked up: every one of the maker’s Bass pages carries a basic game information block, and in every case that block holds a return to player and nothing besides. The third is that the games have been put through a testing house: the maker’s own news page says it submitted several of its games for testing by Gaming Laboratories International, evaluated against technical standards, in part to certify that the published return is accurate. That page names no game and gives no figure, so it is worth exactly what it says and no more.

The fourth is the one that makes this site possible. A maker who publishes a figure per title gives a reader something to weigh an offer against, and the whole method here depends on it: print what the machine states, print what the offer states, work out what the two make. Nothing obliges a maker to publish anything of the kind, and this one does.

Everything after this part is a list of what a reader cannot conclude from the name, each item priced where pricing it is possible. The order runs from the costly to the merely surprising.

2

Twelve returns under one name, and what the spread costs

Here is the fact the rest of this card turns on. Across the thirty-six Bass pages the maker’s own site lists, twelve distinct return figures appear counted across the family table. Ten of them are printed by the maker on its own pages: 95.50, 96.04, 96.07, 96.08, 96.50, 96.51, 96.52, 96.53, 96.70 and 96.71 per cent. Two more appear nowhere on those pages and exist only in the configuration a game is sent at the opening of a session, and part three is about those.

Twelve figures under one name is not a scandal and nothing here suggests it is. It is simply the answer to a question readers do not know they are asking: what does choosing by maker buy you? It buys you a figure somewhere in a band 1.21 points wide, and no way of knowing where in the band you are standing until you look at the particular title. For the slot machines alone the band is narrower and still wide enough to matter, from 96.71 per cent at the top to 96.04 at the foot.

So price it. One credit of £25.00, one requirement of twenty-four times the shape such terms take at this end of the market, one turn priced at ten pence supposed by this card and named again wherever it is spent, and the only thing allowed to vary is which of the maker’s reels the staking crosses. Twenty-four times £25.00 is £600.00 of staking. At the top of the family the reel keeps 3.29 points of it, which is £19.74, and at the foot it keeps 3.96 points, which is £23.76. The credit closes at £5.26 and at £1.24, and the house writes the step as E = B × (1 − W × (1 − RTP) ∕ g), with g the weighting a slot counts at, W the requirement, B the credit and RTP whichever of the maker’s figures the reader has actually landed on.

Four pounds and two pence of a twenty-five pound credit, decided by nothing the reader can see on the name. Read the middle column as well: the requirement of twenty-four times sits comfortably inside break-even at the top of the range and within three quarters of a time of it at the foot, so a reader who moved to a slightly longer requirement would find the lower reel passing from a small return to a loss while the upper one carried on paying. The name did not change at any point in that sentence.

3

Two figures that exist only in the game’s own data

Two titles of the thirty-six report a figure in their own session data that differs from the one printed on the maker’s page for them. Both differences are 0.02 points. For a Megaways title the page says 96.70 and the game says 96.72. For a Halloween title the page says 96.04 and the game says 96.06. Both sources are primary, both are the maker’s own, and this publisher prints the pair rather than choosing between them the two disagreements on the sheet. For the other thirty-three slots read, the two sources agree exactly.

That second figure matters more than its size suggests, because no slot in this family publishes a lower one than 96.04 per cent. A reader at the foot of a maker’s range is standing on the one figure where the maker’s own two sources do not agree. Price it on the same credit: at 96.04 the £25.00 closes at £1.24, and at 96.06 it closes at £1.36. Twelve pence, which is what a disagreement of 0.02 points is worth at twenty-four times on this credit.

Twelve pence is small and the principle is not. A reader who wants a figure to two decimal places has to decide which of a maker’s two voices to believe, and nothing published tells them which, so the only honest course is to carry both. That is the practice everywhere on this site: where sources disagree the page prints the disagreement with who said what, never an average, because an average of two primary sources is a third figure that nobody published at all.

There is a second reason to keep those two figures in view. They are the only places in the whole family where the maker’s page and the maker’s game part company, which makes the remaining thirty-three agreements worth something: a reader checking one title against both sources and finding them identical has learned that the usual case here is agreement, and that is a fact about this maker rather than an assumption about makers in general.

4

One name, five grids, three stake ranges and a tenfold ceiling

If the name settled the return it might at least be expected to settle the shape, and it settles no part of that either. The family runs five different grids: five reels by three rows for most of it, five by four for three titles, six reels with as many as seven rows and six with as many as nine for the two Megaways builds, and three by three for one title whose line field still reads ten, a pair of figures this card reports as it found them because both come from the game itself.

The line count goes with it: ten paylines across most of the family, twelve on three titles, twenty on the two Megaways builds. The stake range takes three values rather than one, which is the figure that matters most to a reader because it sets what a turn can cost: thirty-one of the slots sell a turn from a floor of 0.10 to a ceiling of 250.00, the twelve-line titles from 0.12 to 240.00, and the Megaways pair from 0.20 to the same 240.00. On a licensed British build none of those ranges reaches its own ceiling, since a cycle there stops at £5.00, or at £2.00 until the player’s twenty-fifth year is behind them.

And the biggest round a reel can pay, which looks like the most dramatic quantity of all, runs from 2,100 times the stake at one end of the family to 25,000 at the other. Where a turn costs the ten pence supposed here, that is a ceiling of £210.00 on one title and £2,500.00 on another, from one maker, with nothing on the name to separate them.

None of those four quantities is published on the maker’s own pages. Every one of them comes out of the configuration a game is sent as a session opens, which is why a page citing the maker for a ceiling, a grid, a line count or a stake range has cited the wrong source. The maker’s own site is simply not where the rest of a game’s figures live, and that is not peculiar to this family: of four other well-known titles from the same maker checked for the sheet, two carry a basic game information block holding the return alone and two carry no such block at all.

5

Whether a feature can be bought, which the name does not settle either

There is one more axis the published return genuinely travels along, and it belongs to the player: the bet mode. Of the thirty-five slots here, thirty-three carry a separate figure for each mode in the data their game receives, named for the choices open to a player at the machine: regular play, ante-bet play, and the bonus-buy options where a title has them the per-mode figures in the game’s own data. Those are published, they are primary, and the arithmetic on this site may use them freely.

Two titles carry no such object. The original and one other report a single flat return instead, and the game’s data shows no bonus round available for purchase on either. So whether a reader can buy their way into a feature is not settled by the maker’s name: it is settled title by title, and on the family’s two oldest it is settled in the negative.

The modes of one title stand hundredths of a point from each other, which is worth stating because it is the reverse of part two. On one title the game reports regular play at 96.07, ante at 96.06 and two bonus-buy options at 96.08 and 96.09. On this card’s credit of £25.00 at twenty-four times, the whole distance between the best and the worst of those four modes comes to eighteen pence. Choosing a mode is worth eighteen pence; choosing a title is worth £4.02.

Keep the two apart. The player picks a bet mode at the machine, and the maker publishes a figure for each of them. What somebody else might choose about a machine before a player ever reaches it is a different question entirely, it is not established by anything primary this publisher could find, and the argument about it belongs to the head of this section rather than to any guide. The maker’s own phrase for a feature that is not everywhere, used of bonus-buy availability in one announcement, is “in select markets”, and that is about whether an option appears rather than about what any return is.

6

What a maker’s own licence says about the place running its reels

A software licence authorises the supply of software. Held by this maker since 30 January 2020 as a remote activity, it establishes that the maker may supply gambling software in Great Britain, and it establishes nothing about any casino that has loaded one of its games: not that the casino is licensed here, not that a British player may lawfully be offered it there, and not which build has been loaded.

That distinction is the most expensive one on this card, because the name is what travels. A familiar reel in an unfamiliar lobby is a reel, and a reader who reasons from the reel to the lobby has crossed from a fact about a workshop to a guess about a cashier. The regulator’s published position is blunt: trading without a Commission licence is unlawful, and its own notice records licensed suppliers’ games reaching websites that hold nothing of the sort.

One further thing cannot be established and is printed here rather than quietly omitted. Whether this maker’s own register entry carries any regulatory action is not settled on the sheet: the register’s summary lists a heading for them, the count beside it could not be read in the page as retrieved, and the dedicated sub-page returned a not-found when it was requested. So this card states neither that the maker has such actions recorded nor that it has none, and a page on any site telling a reader either of those things has gone beyond what the register showed that day.

The register does settle some counts, and they are worth having: one licence, five remote activities, all active, and nothing at all recorded against the account under trading names, domain names or premises. A reader who wants to check any of that can open the register entry themselves, which is the point of a public register and the reason this card cites it rather than summarising it.

7

The maker’s name as the register writes it and as the maker does

The name itself is not settled, which is a small finding with a useful edge on it. The public register writes the licensed entity with a space in the middle. The maker’s own game-page footer writes it closed up, without the space, in the same sentence that cites its account number. Two sources, one of them the regulator, disagreeing about the spelling of a company. This publisher uses the register’s form, because the register is the document that makes the entity findable, and records the other.

Something similar happens one level down, with the studio name inside the studio. The maker’s own announcement of the original calls the game the newest addition to its Reel Kingdom offering. That phrase appears on none of the thirty-six Bass game pages. So a reader may fairly say the series is published by this maker and that its own announcement attributes the first title to that offering, and may not call Reel Kingdom the developer as though the game pages said so, because they do not say it at all.

Why does any of this belong on a card about what a name settles? Because it is the same failure in miniature. A name is a label applied by somebody, and labels drift: between a register and a footer, between an announcement and a product page, between a family and the individual machines in it. Every time a reader leans on the label rather than on a published quantity, they are relying on whoever applied it last.

The practical rule this card follows throughout: cite the register for the entity, cite the maker’s page for the return, cite the game’s own data for everything else the game knows about itself, and never let one of the three speak for another.

8

The one thing the name is genuinely good for

After eight hundred words of what a name does not settle, the fair statement of what it does. The name tells a reader where the figure is published. That is not a small service: a reel whose maker publishes nothing leaves a reader with an offer and no way to weigh it, and the whole of this site would be impossible against such a machine.

Follow the route. A reader meets a reel in a lobby and the name is on the tile. The name leads to the maker’s own page for that title, where a basic game information block carries a return. The same name leads to the game itself, whose session data carries the ceiling, the grid, the line count and the stake range. Between the two, every quantity this site weighs an offer against is in hand, for that title, from the party that built it.

Contrast that with what the name is usually spent on, which is reassurance. A familiar maker on the tile feels like a guarantee of something, and the arithmetic in part two is the answer: on one credit under one requirement, the same maker’s reels differ by £4.02, which is sixteen per cent of the credit. Reassurance that varies by sixteen per cent of the sum in question is not reassurance, it is a starting point for looking the figure up.

So the name is an index entry rather than a verdict. Used that way it is genuinely valuable and this card would not have a method without it.

9

The name priced against the figure, on one credit

Set the two beside each other on one credit, because that comparison is the point of the card. Choosing by name alone, a reader lands somewhere in a band 0.67 points wide among the slots, worth £4.02 on £25.00 at twenty-four times. Choosing by the figure, which takes one look at whichever of the maker’s pages belongs to the title in front of them, the band collapses to nothing, because the figure is the thing the band was made of.

£600.00 of staking asked of a £25.00 credit, which comes to 6,000 turns where a turn costs the ten pence supposed here

The span above is worth reading twice. The staking asked is the same £600.00 on either reel, and the turn count is the same 6,000, so a reader experiences the two offers identically: the same evening, the same number of presses, the same requirement in the terms. What differs is £4.02 of expectation, invisibly, through a figure printed on a page neither offer links to.

Two honest qualifications. The £4.02 is an expectation and not a forecast of anybody’s evening: a run of 6,000 turns will land all over the place and the arithmetic describes its average rather than its shape. And the band is this family’s band, not a statement about every reel this maker builds: the sheet behind this site covers thirty-six Bass pages, and what the maker’s other families publish is not on it and is not asserted here.

10

What a reader should do with a maker’s name

Three steps, and none of them takes long. Use the name to find the maker’s own page for the exact title on the tile, not for the family and not for a title with a similar name, since a single word of difference has been worth £4.02 on this card’s credit. Read the figure in the basic game information block, which is the only item that block carries. Then weigh the offer against that figure rather than against a round number, which is what every page on this site does and the reason none of them prints one.

Two things not to do with it. Do not treat the name as a statement about the lobby: the maker’s licence covers supplying software and settles nothing about any cashier, and licensed suppliers’ games have turned up in lobbies holding no licence whatever. And do not treat the name as a statement about dispersion, which is the quantity readers most often believe a familiar maker guarantees. No volatility figure is published for any title in this family, no field for one exists in the data a game receives, and three reviewers who state a figure for the original state three different ones.

The finding, stated as plainly as the card can put it: a maker’s name settles who built the machine, where its figure is published and that the figure exists. It settles neither the return, nor the ceiling, nor the grid, nor the stake range, nor whether a feature can be bought, nor anything whatever about the place the reel is running in. On one ordinary credit the distance between the two ends of what the name permits is £4.02, which is sixteen per cent of the credit and the whole of what this card set out to measure.