People really seem to be latching onto everything they possibly can here to blame NetEnt for their results, and most of it is pretty poorly founded. Having a bunch of data is useless if you don't know how to interpret it.
First of all, the variance of CFTBL is NOT higher than the variance for Dead or Alive. The variance kktmd measured for CFTBL, 160 coins, is based on a 20 coin bet - a variance of 8x the wager amount. The variance measured for DOA is 150 on a 9 coin bet - 16.66x the wager amount. 8x makes for a fairly high variance slot, but 16.66x is pretty enormous. Even if you were making 20 cent bets on CFTBL and 9 cent bets on DOA, the variance per dollar wagered on DOA would still be like 50% higher.
It's also really tough to say much from the graph kktmd posted. We're looking from a zoomed-out enough perspective that makes 500x wins look insignificant. If someone is looking at hundreds of thousands of spins, most slots are going to look like a depressing downward trend of losses. And the variance that kktmd did experience seems to be about 1% below the true RTP - about 100,000 coins. So unless we're accusing NetEnt of lying about the true RTP, we still don't have a representative sample. It's actually pretty hard to get 1000-2000x up on most slots, even over 10s of thousands of spins, and that would still only look like a small blip on the graph.
And some of the complaints here don't really make any sense. You can't simultaneously argue that:
1. The slot pays the true rtp (i.e., is not rigged, usually 96.5% or so)
2. The slot gives lots of dead spins.
3. The slot doesn't provide many reasonable sized wins.
These can't all be true at the same time for a random slot. Either it's high variance and gives you a chance at occasional wins - but little average playtime. Or the opposite - low variance, high playtime, but low chance of a substantial win. It can't both provide no playtime and no big wins. This is of course assuming the slots aren't compensated, which I also haven't seen much evidence for.
In my own opinion, some of the NetEnt releases have been pretty terrible (the low variance ones), but others are perfectly fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with CFTBL in particular - I think it's actually a pretty fairly designed slot. The casino makes its profit the more times you churn through your money - that means a slot with dead spins is actually good for you. It's just a bit on the high variance side, while not being as extreme as something like DoA. 1000x wins are actually an extreme rarity on most slots.
I think it's great that people here are looking into things and trying to make sure the games are fair and provide players a reasonable chance of winning, but let's take a little bit of care and not start shooting at everything that moves. There needs to be a clear idea that can be tested to find out anything useful. That's probably all I'll say on this though - NetEnt's got money to represent themselves if they felt like it, no reason I should defend them if they don't care.