Simple and pure reason...this slot is a perfect example for gambling psychology that Netent and others have perfected over the years. Give the player the impression/hope/sense that he can win 100's from a 9c bet and yes, a lot will stick to the low bets but a lot more will increase them in the hope to get a win in the thousands instead of hundreds ==> big profit for Netent
With the HTML5 format they have taken it to a whole new level. The unwary and even us seasoned players are showered constantly with near misses, wilds flying by on every spin during the bonus round and still not hitting more often, etc. etc..... some will say now --> "oh, i know all that and it won't have any impact on me" ....that is were you are exactly wrong. Videoslots are perfect for working on a humans subconsciousness by showing them the same misses/symbols/combinations over and over again (e.g. 2 scatters on DOA and constantly scatter number 3 on top of reel 4 and 5 just outside the window or the missing 5th symbol on a 5OAK just next to the right position) . The unwary and inexperienced newbies will sit there biting their fingernails all the time, while us seasoned gamblers are annoyed on the surface but deep down hope that next time it will be in the right place to give us that highly desirable 2500+ x bet win.
Compare it with training a dog, dangle a sausage in front of his eyes all the time and he'll do anything to get it, even risking his own life. We players risk our money instead.
Funnily though, i am still ahead overall on this slot after 24 months of hammering it @ over 4,500 spins / daily average and it is the only slot from all, that i played online multiple times, that i managed to do that. And it is only possible because of the huge pay potential as you can lose dozens, even hundreds of deposits in a row and just once a WL on a decent bet size and you are ahead.
Coupled with the knowledge that there are literally 100,000's players spinning on it every day we know that it will produce WL's and 5x scatters on a regular basis, probably dozens every day.
True is though also that the slot is weighted, well, it is for me. I have data for millions of spins all nicely polished in excel sheets and graphs. I published one statistic the other day with the double 5OAK sheriff star. An event happening on micro bets on average every 23,000 spins yet never on large bets in meanwhile over 1.2 million spins. Mathematically that possibility is so small .....to call it random i would need to be hit by lightning 10 times in one day in 5 different locations.
Further, the hit rate / spins --> i divided them into spins paying less than the bet, 1-2x bet and 2+ x bet ....... is that little tad lower on high bets compared to small bets that it is not visible to the normal eye but when i look at it scientifically and do proper calculations it works out appr. in the lowish 10's of a percentage point but that is a huge difference as a $4.50 bet is 50x a 9c bet. Just to explain: do 10x 10,000 spins in a row on 0.09c and at 4.50 and count how many of those spins fall in the categories i named above. You'll be very surprised at the result.