What Happened To RTG's Slots I.S.I.S. 300, The Shark & Others?

[zanzibar]

The numbers on that site are not accurate. It looks to me that the values are being artificially incremented from a starting value so that they appear to be increasing quicker than they do in reality. Refresh the page repeatedly and watch the values increase over and over again.

For example the current value inside the High Noon casino client for Jackpot Pinatas is $1,698,432 and change. Whereas that site has is at least $10,000 more and constantly increasing. It also recommends King Solomons Casino as a great RTG to play at even though it hasn't had RTG software for years and when it did it was basically rogue.

I have contacted a few casino managers and affiliate managers about this but so far no response.

 

[uxix]

No reply for a rep yet..

Never heard of ANYONE ever winning an RTG progressive but we NEED to know where the money went?

 

[Andrewjon0075]

hey thanks zanzibar. Some how the i can not seem to be able to find the thank button to officially thank you. i haven't played much with RTG so not really aware, but it looks like quite a few people seem to me having a problem with it here.

 

[Casinomeister]

Answers

Okay, as requested I've contacted RTG about these games. They were taken down because they just weren't getting much game play - they decided it was time to take them off-line.

The funds were inserted into other jackpots - please bear in mind that the total amount of the jackpot is not strictly "player funds". For instance, if a jackpot starts at $100k and reaches $133k, only $33k and some of the seed were from player funds.

They have special accounts set aside for these games...they don't touch these funds and when a game is taken out, the growth part is placed towards a new game. In the past, they've launched progressives like Aztec Millions and Jackpot Pinatas this way.

Hope that answers some of your questions.

 

[KasinoKing]

- please bear in mind that the total amount of the jackpot is not strictly "player funds". For instance, if a jackpot starts at $100k and reaches $133k, only $33k and some of the seed were from player funds.

Are you sure that's right?
I mean, where does the initial $100K come from, if not from the players?
I would have thought they factor that in to the calculations so that the average value when the jackpot is hit is all covered by player contributions.

And why didn't they tell the players?
I remember when Wagerworks removed some of their progressive slots, they told everyone, and all players got a chance to win a bit of it. I can't remember exactly how they did it now, but that's definitely what happened.

KK

 

[Casinomeister]

Are you sure that's right?
I mean, where does the initial $100K come from, if not from the players?
I would have thought they factor that in to the calculations so that the average value when the jackpot is hit is all covered by player contributions.

And why didn't they tell the players?
I remember when Wagerworks removed some of their progressive slots, they told everyone, and all players got a chance to win a bit of it. I can't remember exactly how they did it now, but that's definitely what happened.

KK

Further from RTG:

KasinoKing is correct that the seed is factored in but when there is very little play over time, the seed never gets fully funded and if it hit, we pay the difference…this has happened to us over the years for some large jackpots...

Re. KK’s question…what we’ve done is added the funds to the seed for a bigger original seed and modified the contribution so it is taken into account...

One last update regarding big hits.

We paid out $1,44M in late 2009 to Club World for a hit on Aztec Millions…this was paid in full.
+++++++++

As for why they didn't say anything? RTG (like many software providers) don't publish press releases when they remove games. It's like admitting your games suck

Just my extrapolation - that's all.

 

[vinylweatherman]

Further from RTG:

KasinoKing is correct that the seed is factored in but when there is very little play over time, the seed never gets fully funded and if it hit, we pay the difference…this has happened to us over the years for some large jackpots...

Mathematically, that's bollocks - just ask Michael Shackleford. The probabilty of hitting a progressive in any spin remains the same, and it does not matter what the average interval between spins is. A little played game will not fund the pool so quickly, but less play means a LOWER chance of the progressive being hit in a given time period. RTG are just as likely to have to "pay the difference" on a popular game where, by chance, the progressive hits more frequently that the expected frequency. The progressive being won does not lower the probability of each subsequent spin winning, so a couple of hits in a row will cause the seed to be won before it has been recouped, and this will be the case regardless of how popular the game is.

The main reason for getting rid of an unpopular game is that it's pool is sitting in a game that few players use, and so does not "earn it's keep" by attracting players to the game, and is better utilised being transferred to an already popular game, making it even MORE attractive. RTG launched 2 new progressives, but by removing older and unpopular ones, they have managed to achieve this without having even more of their capital tied up.


Re. KK’s question…what we’ve done is added the funds to the seed for a bigger original seed and modified the contribution so it is taken into account...

One last update regarding big hits.

We paid out $1,44M in late 2009 to Club World for a hit on Aztec Millions…this was paid in full.
+++++++++

As for why they didn't say anything? RTG (like many software providers) don't publish press releases when they remove games. It's like admitting your games suck

Just my extrapolation - that's all.

The risk is that even an unpopular game has SOME fans, and it is these fans that notice that their favourite game has been removed "for no reason", and so wonder what the "big secret" is regarding the removal of what for them was a very POPULAR game.

RTG also removed all their "bonus" 3 reel classic slots, ones such as "Frozen Assets". Whilst no doubt "cutting edge" when created, they were pretty simple compared to later game developments, and the simplicity of their bonus rounds can make the game "boring" after you have played it for a while. Maybe RTG didn't want their product to become over bloated like MGS, so began to review older games to see if they were worth keeping.

MGS seem unwilling to remove old games, and they have been named winners of "bloatware of the year" awards by many players, even to the point where players stopped playing because the product was too bloated, rather than because they didn't like the games. Removal of "clones" might be something MGS should consider, but it seems they like being able to advertise that their product offers many more games than the rest, with some MGS casinos now boasting "more than 450 games".

 

[zanzibar]

Its an interesting one. IRIS seeds at $100,000, the other two for $1000 and $2000. They launched Shopping Spree II so you could assume the money went there but that started at around $200,000. So the numbers still don't really add up to the $440,000 or so but I don't think we'll ever get a straight answer. One thing I do know after looking at a few graphs of the time period is that they didn't put the money into their other existing jackpots, unless they split it up into insignificant amounts.