Heya,
The issue comes in when a game has re-trigger capability during free spins.
Given that it is theoretically possible to re-trigger indefinitely there is often a jurisdictional cap placed in order to protect the venue.
Raindance is a good example, where a 5 scatter trigger will yield 100 free games, and 100 more are then awarded on ANY retrigger (so 3 or more scatters will re-trigger 100 free games).
Expanding wilds, progressively increasing free game multipliers, variable and potentially large multipliers and other similar mechanisms are very effective and entertaining, which is why they are used.
Most players will never experience a "maximum win reached" scenario, and the RTP loss to such a cap is infinitesimal, so there's rarely any need to not use such a function in a game.
Mind you, in order to avoid the potential to cap easily most games will not use massive single combination wins, such as 5 of a kind paying 100,000, for example.
Also, Wolf Run is capped, where it is released in jurisdictions where a cap exists.
Woooof
P.S: I should have said 1/$70 in the UK, not 70p. Was 50p/35 till this month.
The RTP GAIN from NOT having a cap is similarly infinitesimal. MG, for example, have slots where, theoretically, you could win WAY more than 50000x line bet, yet MG casinos are not afraid of this. It seems that it IS about funding when it comes to RTG casinos, for it is not just about a cap on slot wins, they all seem to have these various, and really VERY low weekly or monthly max withdrawal limits, and pay players by installments on even modest payouts of a few thousand dollars.
An MG casino will pay me 20,000 in one slug - been there, it was All Jackpots. An RTG casino will trickle it out over a number of weeks - even reputable ones.
With RTG, the cap has allowed the development of slots that overstate themselves, where the theoretical max win combination will NEVER be realised, since that one combination alone will exceed the max payout. Realm of riches is one example where 5 expanding wilds exceeds on that one free spin alone the total cap for the feature round. Raindance has the abilty to give 100 free spins, and these will give 100 retriggers no matter how many scatters hit. There is, however, the slot Native Treasure in Cryptologic casinos that has the same 100 spin possibility (awarded at random, not for 5 scatters), and this too retriggers to the starting amount. There is no cap on this slot however, and in theory it can go on forever.
What SOME MG and other have though, is a max WIN per day/week, etc, but this is an absolute amount, such as 100,000 for example, and not based on the payout from an individual game. This also protects the casino from an "infinite" win, but is more acceptable as it is even LESS likely to be seen by players, and often big wins are balanced out by losses - not something the RTG cap takes into consideration. It could take, say, $10,000 of losses before a player hits the 100 free spins on Raindance, yet they could be capped without the chance to even win back their losses - it would depend on what bet level they used on the triggering spin.
The above all makes it possible for RTG to offer those "too good to be true" bonuses, it is just a clever marketing ploy, players see far bigger bonuses, but they DON'T see how their value is reduced by these other mechanisms.
If RTG have upgraded ALL slots to 50000x line bet caps, how have they paid for this, has the slight increase in RTP been taken back by a tiny change in what 99.9% will see paid back to them?
The point about UK machines does not really apply, as the cap does not actually "confiscate" bigger wins, the machine simply cannot generate a win greater than the cap, and this is obvious from the paytable.
