I mean I often thought about it myself. But there are rational answers available. It’s not too uncommon for an unpopular slot machine to get pulled out of service, before it’s able to disperse most of the money that was put in it; like it’s suppose to do based on its RTP values.
A Reddit user asked a question about the RNG and the life of a slot machine:
No smart@ss casino shills. Honest question. Say a machine has 5 denoms with 5 different bets so it has 25 different betting combinations. Say these games are full 8 hours a day and topically popular. How does life of the machine work on these? Is it per denom/bet or all combined? What happens when the machine is pulled and it only paid out 25% what was taken in? I noticed sets of games typically get pulled every few years and replaced. There’s no way they all hit 5 million spins at the same time , also .50 cent vs $10 spins is way different.
Whatever the lifecycle of a slot machine; payouts are always tracked
There are many ways to look at this, but it will all come to the basic answer.
A slot machine has a set RTP coded into it. Nothing can change that, unless it’s decommissioned or deliberately tampered with. But it is still “theoretical” and averaged out based on “millions of future spins.”
The casino’s own tracking system also does its job; for example, these places know how much money has come in vs. gone out. Like coin-in vs. coin-out.
Casinos tracking slot machine performance is like your boss tracking your work – if you slack off too much (pay out too much), you get “adjusted” (fired). But if you work too hard (never pay out), everyone complains, and you still get “reassigned” (pulled off the floor). Either way, the house always wins, and you just keep spinning in place.
Plus the performance of a slot title is based on all sorts of metrics, not just denominations.
And, a casino is free to pull a slot machine out; if it either pays out too much (which means losses for it), or doesn’t perform well i.e., players don’t like it. Feel bored quickly or unlucky.
Paying out 25% is way too low by the way
I know the example the Redditor gave was a bit on the far side of the spectrum, but realistically the payout percentages isn’t in its 20s.
If it were, I would have never ever won the $11K at Wild Casino. Well, I lost all of it later, but the slots I played did pay me. Read my Wild Casino review to get the complete picture.
If a slot machine only pays back 25%, even the casino would be like, “Whoa, buddy, at least pretend to let them have fun!”
At that point, it’s less a game and more a donation box with flashing lights. Even the ATM would feel bad for you.
Also modern slots are programmed to pay out 85% to 98%. There is no way it would not have frequent winners on a busy casino site or a physical casino visited by thousands of people every month. In Nevada, for example, the Gaming Control Board has strict rules for minimum payouts for slots. If you’re interested, go through this PDF that outlines its Internal Control Procedures for slots.
Unless, there is a genuine hanky-panky going on in the backend (chances of it are low since most games are coded by third-party iGaming providers), or no one plays it; I don’t think hitting close to its true RTP values would be unattainable.
What casinos do when a slot machine is not paying out, is to leave them be. Give it time to recalibrate itself because the variance will eventually bring it back to balance. Or, simply complain to the iGaming company that coded it to reprogram it. And if it has something to do with its popularity then simply remove it from the floor or the app. Sometimes a game can be removed because its provider goes bust, or ends its product support.
A slot machine can be replaced before it hits its set number of spins
Casinos are out there to make money. They can and do keep changing slot machines based on its popularity, manufacturer support and financial incentives (this part is the most important).
If it isn’t making money, then it’s got to go.
Casinos replacing slot machines is like dating in Vegas – if you’re fun, exciting, and making money, you stick around. But the moment you stop performing, they replace you with something newer, flashier, and with bigger bonus features.
Talk of bonuses, I recently tested out CasinoMax which is quite big on deposit bonuses. Don’t have high expectations for it, but it does offer a lot of free money, things like no deposit bonuses etc. Read my review of CasinoMax to get a better picture.
Coming back to the topic; by the way, hot slot titles can remain on the floor for years; I’ve seen names older than 5 years many times. For example, Wheel of Fortune Slots by IGT; Lightning Link (2015) and Buffalo Gold (2016) by Aristocrat are a few that come to mind.
People still play them in casinos all over world, not just America, so these will stay on like that for a considerable time in the future. It’s because people win on them quite frequently. Like on 1st January 2025, a guy won $113,411 playing the Lightning Link slot. And it was also a $1 denomination. You see anything is possible.
High denomination games do tend to get replaced more often than others because of bigger volatility and swings, but most of all it requires high-net-worth player base.
Higher denominations do have different payback percentages attached to them
If you put in more money per bet, your chances of winning are increased by a pre-set amount, even with the RNG math at play.
Even on the same machine a man playing with 50-cent vs. a man throwing $10 per spin would have drastically different outcomes. For casinos this matters, because they need people to spend more per bet as it directly relates to their bottom line.
Playing different denominations on the same slot is like flying economy vs. first class. At 50 cents, you get a tiny bag of peanuts and hope for the best. At $10 a spin, the casino pours you champagne and lets you think you have a chance – before taking your money with extra legroom. 😉
The thing is slot machines are monitored closely by the casinos and whatever decision they take is totally based on its overall financial performance and the player demand; not the RNG, RTP or the number of spins the people have already played on it.
All major casino brands have a mechanism in place to replace or adjust slots that are paying out way below the expectations. In most cases, the math balances out, provided it is given a reasonable amount of time for enough number of people to have tried their luck on them.