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However, there have been a few responses,
such as
this one, running under the oxymoronic title "Built-in automatic
lose IS fair play", from
Amusement Arcade, ("The Voice Of The Arcade") a site run by an arcade
operator and manager. You can read the entire article for yourself by
following the link, but some of the comments are extremely revealing, and
worth some analysis here. "Legally, gaming machines must pay out on or above 70%" This comment reveals that even the people running Britain's arcades are apparently entirely unaware of the laws regarding their machines. There is, of course, NO legally-enforceable minimum payout on any fruit machine which can be played by the public. "One of our Golden X’s gave a customer £95 on the ‘Golden Game’ feature for a total win - this would not have been possible if the play wasn’t controlled. Yes, agreed, more people would win tiny amounts but nobody would get the ‘big one'." This is a particularly revealing comment. The writer is referring to a "streak", whereby on accessing a particular feature the machine will pay out a series of consecutive wins with a combined value in excess of the maximum legally-permitted jackpot, which is currently £25. The machines get around this fact by reducing the player's credits by one each time a multiple of £25 is breached, so that the player is not winning more than the maximum jackpot with any individual "game", or credit. However, this clearly constitutes a "series of enhanced games", which is explicitly forbidden by the BACTA rules (specifically section 5.2) which all UK machines are supposed to adhere to. So the arcade manager is admitting that the reason the machine cheats to rob players of their money is so that it can save up to be able to afford a high-value "streak", which is in itself both in clear breach of BACTA's own rules and illegal, as it is in effect a single win which is far in excess of the legal maximum. "nobody would get the ‘big one’ – all player appeal lost." And here's another lie exposed. Some operators have claimed that fruit machines are not gambling machines at all, but "Amusement With Prizes" - that is, you're not playing them to win, you're playing them for the entertainment of the reels spinning and the lights flashing and the music playing, and any money won back is merely an irrelevant bonus. And yet, here we have an operator freely admitting that without the chance of a big win, "all player appeal is lost". In other words, people are only playing to win money. Or in short, gambling.
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