RTP of games, how is it monitored, by whom and at what point is action taken?

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Hello!

I was just wondering how can a game (Tombstone) advertised at approx 96% RTP run at significantly lower RTP for a very long time? In my knowledge, the only sites which show the true RTP of games are videoslots.com and mrvegas.com. I know for a fact, that mrvegas is approx one year old, and their RTP shows 87.9%. Videoslots has been around for years, and I guess they have had Tombstone from the games publication - yet it still has approx 4% lower RTP than this game should have (92.1%). I know the game is volatile, but there has most certainly been billions of spins on this game in this timeframe. All casinos say that the RTP should come close to the TRTP over time, but in my opinion 4% (let alone 9%) is quite a difference.

So, at what point is the RTP checked and by who and what actions are taken if the game constantly runs on too low RTP?

Obviously the game exists on plenty other casinos as well, so it might be that some of them is sporting way over 100%RTP over the years, but the only available data is from the sites showing the true RTP. And videoslots is quite popular site..

PS. Before anyone says the game is not popular enough, I checked on mrvegas.com, Tombstone is on page 525/544 when sorted by least played ascending (10/page)...

PPS. For instance Bonanza is spot on (96%) on both casinos.
 
Ideally, online games related to Random Numbers Generator should be provided by the third party which is not profiting directly from the process (e.g. government). I don’t see any other scenario in which online gamblers can fully trust the fairness of the games they play online. (And that “leap of faith” suggestion above just shows how deeply absurd and fake the current system is).
 
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@Odds4slots . True but that is another discussion! :) At the moment, RTP is the only thing players can monitor themselves (though it's for not any use, as you will never ever play millions / billions of spins by yourself).

@snorky510238 . OR, the game was changed after the initial testing (as @trancemonkey implied in his earlier post about checksums, it can be done but not legally)

@goatwack , exactly my point! Which is why I keep on insisting if there is any independent parties monitoring the RTP constantly.
 
- Do you know of any government actually monitoring the RTP? As you said, if they wanted to? I would suspect UKGC is quite reliable and the fact that they don't monitor RTP constantly tells a story on its own.
- Second point, do you have any info of refunding the players actually occuring? Also, you use the word should, which obviously mean you are not sure or you don't know. Also, RTP situation, when game has been advertised untruthful TRTP, shouldnt all the money be returned to players in your opinion?
- I asked our Finnish Gambling Commision as they now offer games such as Red Tiger, BTG etc. I will inform this thread if/when I get an answer.
- Yet again I would like to ask info on such case happening - I understand if you don't have such info, but with MGA, I am sure it is all about the money (see my posts about Condor Malta)

I have no inside information, I am a player who has played for over 10 years. All information I get is trought these threads / reading stuff from other forums (such as thepogg.com, askgamblers.com) and directly from casinos / gambling commisions.

As for the truth, you use words such as if, should, might etc. The truth might be something else, don't you agree?

EDIT, and you didn't answer this question:

**

Is there something I have missed? At which point is an independent party a part of this process (by independent I understand a party that doesn't gain direct income from games running at lowered RTP)? PS. initial testing, sure, but the thread is about RTP monitoring.

**

.. or do you disagree that not all of these parties would directly gain more income trough lowered RTP?
1. Yes, Italy and Greece are two examples i can think of.
2. Yes - it happened when i was working at Inspired many years ago. It was a nightmare to try and work out which players had lost money as the fault didn't affect everyone. You view is sadly far too simplistic - because you don't understand the complexities of software development. You can't understand how faults can happen if the game is tested... but there are many, many ways faults can occur outside of what test houses would test. My current company STILL gets faults in games that have been through some of the most rigourous testing in the world? Why? Because software isn't as simple as you may think - faults can occur simply because of thread timing issues, or all sorts of other weird things that may only occur on a specific bit of hardware if that hardware is faulty (for example). It's just not as easy as you think it is...
3. Hope you get an answer
4. And i am well aware of cases where players have had to have funds given back due to software faults - it's ONLY given as a fine to charities where it is not possible to determine who has lost, or how much was lost, etc.. - Again, your simplistic view of things sometimes doesn't match reality.

And i will answer your question - to my knowledge, there is no "independent party" monitoring in the UK as far as i'm aware. I can't speak for other countries, but i doubt it. Other than to appease people like yourself, i'm not sure why it would be necessary - especially as the regulators should be the ones doing it. Just like regulators in all other industries. The fact you assert the regulator is somehow also likely bent because they also get money from licences is just silly - as the regulator has to answer to the government. If your government is also corrupt, then no amount of "independent" checks will satisfy people like yourself who have distrust in so many parts of the process.

All i know is that we have to bend over backwards and jump through so many hoops just to get games through test houses - so you can assert what you want, but i actually have to deal with this on a daily basis. :)
 
1. Yes, Italy and Greece are two examples i can think of.
2. Yes - it happened when i was working at Inspired many years ago. It was a nightmare to try and work out which players had lost money as the fault didn't affect everyone. You view is sadly far too simplistic - because you don't understand the complexities of software development. You can't understand how faults can happen if the game is tested... but there are many, many ways faults can occur outside of what test houses would test. My current company STILL gets faults in games that have been through some of the most rigourous testing in the world? Why? Because software isn't as simple as you may think - faults can occur simply because of thread timing issues, or all sorts of other weird things that may only occur on a specific bit of hardware if that hardware is faulty (for example). It's just not as easy as you think it is...
3. Hope you get an answer
4. And i am well aware of cases where players have had to have funds given back due to software faults - it's ONLY given as a fine to charities where it is not possible to determine who has lost, or how much was lost, etc.. - Again, your simplistic view of things sometimes doesn't match reality.

And i will answer your question - to my knowledge, there is no "independent party" monitoring in the UK as far as i'm aware. I can't speak for other countries, but i doubt it. Other than to appease people like yourself, i'm not sure why it would be necessary - especially as the regulators should be the ones doing it. Just like regulators in all other industries. The fact you assert the regulator is somehow also likely bent because they also get money from licences is just silly - as the regulator has to answer to the government. If your government is also corrupt, then no amount of "independent" checks will satisfy people like yourself who have distrust in so many parts of the process.

All i know is that we have to bend over backwards and jump through so many hoops just to get games through test houses - so you can assert what you want, but i actually have to deal with this on a daily basis. :)
Bless you, you're such an asset to this forum.
You've the patience of a saint.
 
Bless you, you're such an asset to this forum.
You've the patience of a saint.
Not always... ;) Sometimes i just want to call people all sorts of names and throw a paddy ;)
 
1. Yes, Italy and Greece are two examples i can think of.
2. Yes - it happened when i was working at Inspired many years ago. It was a nightmare to try and work out which players had lost money as the fault didn't affect everyone. You view is sadly far too simplistic - because you don't understand the complexities of software development. You can't understand how faults can happen if the game is tested... but there are many, many ways faults can occur outside of what test houses would test. My current company STILL gets faults in games that have been through some of the most rigourous testing in the world? Why? Because software isn't as simple as you may think - faults can occur simply because of thread timing issues, or all sorts of other weird things that may only occur on a specific bit of hardware if that hardware is faulty (for example). It's just not as easy as you think it is...
3. Hope you get an answer
4. And i am well aware of cases where players have had to have funds given back due to software faults - it's ONLY given as a fine to charities where it is not possible to determine who has lost, or how much was lost, etc.. - Again, your simplistic view of things sometimes doesn't match reality.

And i will answer your question - to my knowledge, there is no "independent party" monitoring in the UK as far as i'm aware. I can't speak for other countries, but i doubt it. Other than to appease people like yourself, i'm not sure why it would be necessary - especially as the regulators should be the ones doing it. Just like regulators in all other industries. The fact you assert the regulator is somehow also likely bent because they also get money from licences is just silly - as the regulator has to answer to the government. If your government is also corrupt, then no amount of "independent" checks will satisfy people like yourself who have distrust in so many parts of the process.

All i know is that we have to bend over backwards and jump through so many hoops just to get games through test houses - so you can assert what you want, but i actually have to deal with this on a daily basis. :)
1. Thanks for the reply!
2. I do understand, as I work in the software business (granted, not on such scale dealing with a lot of money). I am only trying to keep things simple on this thread.
3. Me too.
4. In this part I have to disagree - though I do understand there is nothing you can do about it. If I market a product which isn't what I promised, the customers should get their money back. All of it. To determine how much a player has lost on one game is easy. And RTP of 4% too low will mean a lot less withdrawals (possibly none).

That is all I asked and wanted to know: there is no independent party monitoring the games, which is what online casinos have been telling us all this time. The argument which (if any) parties are corrupt can be tabled to another discussion. I just want to say, at least in our government is comprised mainly of politicians and ex-celebrities - would they even understand anything about the business other than the gambling commission tells them? :)
 
4. In this part I have to disagree - though I do understand there is nothing you can do about it. If I market a product which isn't what I promised, the customers should get their money back. All of it. To determine how much a player has lost on one game is easy. And RTP of 4% too low will mean a lot less withdrawals (possibly none).

It's really not that simple. You may think it is, but it really isn't. For example, let's assume the issue occurs in a game with persistence, where the persisted state is not stored correctly from one session to another - you could have a stack overflow or variable overflow which stamps over something else and sets a value to be incorrect. But you would have no way of knowing exactly what that variable was changed to, other than knowing it was wrong... you would need to try and determine what impact that had on the RTP and for how long (and if that var was only stored for the length of the session, and reset or restored the next time a game loaded, then the RTP difference would depend on how long you played for, and even maybe at what stakes).

Now, in theory all the data is there because it's stored, but to look at this and figure out what you actually lost could end up having to be a manual process - and throw in all the "what if?" scenarios (i.e maybe some bonuses are only available on a certain stake) and you end up in an impossible situation trying to pinpoint exactly what each player lost.

These are of course just me positing why things may be difficult, but faults can take any number of paths and have any number of outcomes. But yes, IF you can work out how much people have lost, then yes you SHOULD (and really must) repay them.
 
This all really comes back to the op saying the RTP on the videoslots page shows lower than the trtp in a particular jurisdiction. Without knowing how VS calculated these figures it's really a moot argument to ask how people should be compensated for a fault that has not actually occurred.
For all we know VS calculates the figure on a daily basis across multiple jurisdictions and RTP's (someone mentioned countries with lower RTP's due to higher taxes) which would of course lead to fluctuations within expected tolerances - If you sort by highest actual payouts you'll see plenty of games reporting 200%+ there but of course you wouldn't expect that means the game has a TRTP of 200%, just that whatever time interval they are basing their stats on had some lucky players.
 
This is a whole another discussion altogether, but as a player you really don't care about technical side.

- Imagine a player playing eg. Tombstone, which runs at 4% lower RTP for a long time.
- The 4% lower RTP is caused by error which causes scatters not to exist.
- A player 'chases' scatters, which frequency should be around 100-500 spins.
- Even though a player might get OK base game wins, he won't be able to withdraw as he chased scatters - which are promised to exist and by previous play you get the approximate frequency of them appearing.
- So a player thought he had a fair chance in getting scatters, which were not available trough error -> god knows how much money lost :)

Wouldn't you say in this scenario, the player is entitled to get his/her money back?

EDIT: But as I said on last post, this is all theoretical, I am not after any refunds. The purpose of this whole thread is/was to know how RTP is monitored and if it is truly monitored by independent parties.
 
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@neon claws , yes this thread has fluctuated quite a lot :) And this is all theoretical, as videoslots / mrvegas are only two casinos (which probably calculates the RTP on their side only).

However, if some casino still claims they are monitored by independent third party, I can point the to this thread. @trancemonkey has brilliantly answered pretty much all the questions asked, thanks for that. But in the end of the day, you just have to believe all parties are honest. It is up to players to decide!

EDIT: concerning MGA casinos:
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:)
 
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EDIT: concerning MGA casinos:
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:)
Come on, if you are not satisfied with MGA then there are plenty of honest and trustful casinos regulated by Curacao.

“According to an American survey, most states in the USA are corrupted, but according to the DEA these numbers are nothing compared to the corruption levels on some of the Caribbean Islands. Aruba, St.Maarten and Curacao top the corruption list”.
“The Dutch Caribbean Islands, in particular Curacao, faces all of the above mentioned corrupt issues all @ once. The hunt for one honest public official is useless, as all levels of government services are corrupted to the bone”.

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See the source image
 
@neon claws unfortunately, no. I closed my account on both videoslots / mrvegas while playing the 75%-88% RTP version of Tombstone for over a year. But as I said earlier on this thread, they are the only casinos which show the RTP for this game. Obviously, one month of gameplay can bring up the RTP 4% (after a year below TRTP), someone must've won shedloads of money on Tombstone conveniantly after questioning too low RTP! :)
 
Just thought I'd add this - One time a rep at videoslots tried to convince me that a lower RTP was better - truth. I left the chat and also couldn't understand his reasoning.
 
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