Home » Tips & Tricks » Variable RTP: The new „Gotcha” on the block

Variable RTP: The new “gotcha” on the block

In the past few years a new trend has emerged from a lot of online slot providers: variable RTP. As if it wasn’t already a challenge to make sure you’re going to have a good experience in a casino, they decided to add another thing us players have to look out for. Let’s take a look at what it is and how can we guard against it.

What is RTP?

In short RTP is an acronym for “Return to Player” and represents the amount of money, as a percentage, that a player wins back on average when playing the game over a long period of time. This is usually the main way to see what the house edge is (100%-RTP value) and at how big of a disadvantage you are.

For a very long time this value was set in stone. It was decided when the mathematical model for the slot was developed. Depending on what symbols were available, what features made it into the game and how often they came up, a statistical chance for each situation was calculated and that’s how you got the RTP percentage. So, regardless of what online casino you chose to play at, you could be sure that when you went to play Starburst it would have the same 96.09%.

What is variable RTP an why should you care?

But today, variable RTP enters the scene. A multitude of providers have decided that when creating games, they should offer multiple variants for RTP, thus multiple mathematical models for the same game. And who gets to decide which version you’re presented with? The casino operators.

So now, the house gets to decide how big its edge is and the only way to know beforehand is to do your due dilligence. The problem with this arrangement is that’s probably the last thing we want to do on a Wednesday evening, after work when we just want to wind down for a little bit. And the problem is, the differences are massive: going from a 96% RTP to 94% is going to increase the house profit by 50%. When was the last time you pressed a button and got a 50% raise at your job?

So now, if you go to your favourite site and play Book of Dead you could have a 96% RTP, or even a 92%. You’ll have to check this aspect every time. Even the same casino can change the RTP at a whim, so every time you join a new session you’d have to check or trust the casino that it’s consistent with their old decisions.

Most of the time you’ll find this information either in the paytable details or in the game help file. Make sure to check at least before you expect to have one of the longer sessions or are looking to deposit a large sum of money to play.

What are the game providers that offer variable RTP?

From what we’ve seen so far some of the biggest game providers have joined this new trend so we’ve compiled a list of the ones we noticed offer variable RTP games:

Play’n GO
NetEnt (only on a few of them)
IGT
RedTiger
Pragmatic Play
Hacksaw Games
Thunderkick (only a few)
Novomatic
Just for the win
Microgaming (on the remakes of old games)
Push Gaming
Nolimit City

If you don’t want to bother with these checks here are a few higher profile game providers with fun and popular games that still stick to the single RTP model for their games:

Relax Gaming
Yggdrasil Games
Kalamba Games
Nextgen Gaming
Iron Dog Studio (via 1×2 Gaming network integrations)

At the end of the day it’s going to be like it’s always been: we’re going to have to be careful ourselves, as consumers, since there is a permanent arms race between casino operators and legislators when it comes to proper consumer communication.

Vote with your wallet and pick the product that works best for you!