How to defeat the automatic machine Hvataik

Как победить автомат Хватайка

In April, Vox issued a revelation of popular slot machines, known in Russia as "crane machines" or "Hvatajki."

In the instructions to the machines of the company BMI Gaming, journalists found that such devices have a special mechanism for losing, but it is not designed in an obvious way.

Two months later, the representatives of the community of manufacturers of such automatic machines reacted to the recording, and BMI Gaming removed instructions from open access.

Как победить автомат Хватайка

In the instructions to the Advanced Crane Machine of the brand Black Tie Toys, the journalists found several configurable parameters responsible for the probability of losing.

They determined how strong the claw would be, and how often it would fall out to the player to the fullest.

Как победить автомат Хватайка

With such options, the owners of "Hvataiqi" ​​could adjust it so that the winnings occurred only in one of several dozens of times.

And the "hard grip" fell out randomly, so that a programmable loss was harder to detect.

This allowed players to think that the chances of winning depend on their dexterity, and made them play more and more.

As explained by the publication, the ability to independently adjust the profit received from the machine gave its owners scope for experiments.

For example, they could first make the machine more "simple" so that it could earn a reputation for easy profit among players, and then change the strategy to a more lucrative institution.

In some devices, this percentage of profits was adjusted automatically, depending on the player's skills.

Such opportunities were not only one specific brand: according to the authors of Vox, these parameters are the industry standard. In the US, local laws deal with the regulation of gaming machines in general, but in the case of "cranes" it is not about the honesty of machines, but about the cost of winning. Usually it is limited to several dozen dollars: so machines do not become a bait for large players, but still are of interest to children.

After the publication of the article on Vox, industry representatives responded in the profile edition of the Vending Times. According to them, this was not the first time such revelations, but journalists touched upon the important problem of the lack of state regulation of such devices or, conversely, the use of too old laws, many of which are more than 60 years old.

According to the authors of the note in the Vending Times, machine makers are moving towards 100% prevalence of players' skills over a programmable loss and are independently engaged in industry regulation without government intervention. Nevertheless, BMI Gaming, on whose site the mentioned Vox instructions were publicly available, deleted them without any explanation.