Game Studios

What we compare studios on

Not catalogue size, and not awards. Three things, all of which can be checked by opening a game.

What they state. Whether the game itself tells you what it returns, or whether you have to take a number off a listing page. This varies more between studios than you would expect, and within a studio more than that.

How they price. The range of returns we have actually read across a studio’s games, rather than the one figure it puts on a press release.

Whether you can check it. Whether the studio permits its demo build to be framed on a site like this one, so you can open the rules screen yourself instead of trusting our screenshot.

The middle column is the one worth reading twice. Every figure in it is a count of games we opened, not a policy we were told about.

Three habits we have caught studios in

Pragmatic Play holds the return still and moves the ceiling

Across every Pragmatic slot we have read, the return sits between 96.06% and 96.71%. Two thirds of a percentage point covers the lot. Over the same games the maximum win runs from 2,100x to 25,000x, which is close to twelvefold.

That is a design decision, and once you see it you cannot unsee it on their marketing. The number that changes from title to title is the one on the poster. The number that decides what the game costs you barely moves.

The same studio prices its crash games lower

This one only appeared when we started reading crash games, and it is the clearest single finding on this page.

One studio, one year, and a gap of more than half a percentage point between what its slots return and what its crash games return. Both crash titles state the identical figure, which is unsurprising once you know Big Bass Crash runs on the Spaceman engine, but the gap to the slots is not something either game tells you.

It is not a scandal. Different formats, different maths, and 95.50% is a perfectly ordinary figure for the genre. It is simply not visible unless somebody reads both and puts them next to each other, and the studio has no reason to.

Merkur ships sequels that return less than the original

Fishin’ Frenzy reports 96.12%. Its Big Catch sequel reports 95.32%. The sequel is the newer, glossier, more heavily promoted game, and it is the one that returns less.

The general pattern is worth carrying into any game you play: a sequel is a marketing decision before it is a maths decision, and the number is set independently of the artwork.

Which studios are not here, and why

Four studios have profiles. That is not a shortlist of the best, it is a list of the ones whose games we have read enough of to say something checkable.

A studio gets a page when we have opened its games and read their screens. Some large names are missing because their demo builds cannot be framed on a third-party site, which means we could describe them but not show you the evidence, and a profile without evidence is the thing this site exists to avoid.

Using a studio page

The facts table at the top of each profile is computed from the reviews underneath it rather than typed in, so it cannot drift out of date when a new game goes up. The RTP range is the span we read ourselves across that studio’s games, and every game behind it is linked, so any figure on this site is two clicks from the screenshot it came from.

Where a studio does not publish something, the profile says so rather than filling the gap from somewhere else. Those blanks are results too.

Common questions

Which studio has the best RTP?

The question is badly posed and the averages show why. Across what we have read, Pragmatic Play means 96.29% over twelve games and Merkur 96.22% over two. Those are close enough to be noise, and the Pragmatic figure is dragged down by two crash games while its slots alone would sit higher.

An average over two games and an average over twelve are not comparable anyway, and neither tells you what the game you are about to open returns. The span in the table above is the more useful number, and the figure on the game’s own screen is the only one that decides anything.

Why does one studio show a wider RTP range than another?

Usually because we have read more of its games. A studio with twelve readings will show a wider span than a studio with two, without being any less consistent. The range is the span we found, not a claim about the catalogue.

What does “states a return” actually mean?

That we opened the game and found a return to player figure inside it, on a rules screen, in a help panel or in the build’s own setup data. It does not mean the studio publishes a figure somewhere on its website. Those are different things, and the difference is the reason this column exists.

Are these figures the same at every casino?

Not necessarily. Some studios ship a title in more than one configuration and the operator chooses which to run, so the figure in the game in front of you is the one that counts. Everything here was read from the studio’s own demo build, which is the closest thing to a default that can be checked from outside.

Why are there only four studios?

Because a studio gets a page once we have read enough of its games to say something checkable about it. Some large names are missing because their demo builds cannot be framed on a third-party site, so we could describe them but not show you the evidence. We would rather have four profiles carrying findings than thirty carrying a paragraph each.