Business Sega sued for rigged Key Master arcade machine

Sega sued for ‘rigged’ arcade machine

The Key Master game machine has been a target for years

www.polygon.com

Sega’s Key Master arcade game is causing problems for the company once again. A new lawsuit alleges that Key Master is intentionally rigged against players. It’s marketed as a game of skill, but players claim machines bar against awarding successful runs, making Key Master more of a chance-based game.

Marcelo Muto filed the lawsuit on Monday in a California court. It’s a proposed class action lawsuit looking for $5 million in damages to be distributed amongst wronged consumers. With Sega, Play It! Amusements (which is owned by Sega and now called Sega Amusements) and Komuse America (which co-manufactures Key Master) are named in the suit.

Key Master has been the target of multiple court cases in the past, dating back to at least 2013. This 2021 lawsuit, as well as the others, claims these machines are rigged only to allow players to win prizes at certain times — specifically, at intervals determined by player losses.

You’ve probably seen Key Master machines in malls or arcades, touting prizes like iPads, earbuds, and other pricey electronics. To play, you must navigate a key towards a specific keyhole by stopping the automatic movement by hitting a button. If the key goes in, you win the prize. The problem, according to the lawsuit, is that these machines are programmed to only allow players the ability to win after a certain number of player failures.

Image: Marcelo Muto via class action complaint

“Nowhere on the Key Master Machine do Defendants inform consumers of the truth: that the machines are rigged so that players can only win prizes at certain times,” lawyers for Muto said in the lawsuit.

If the machine is not ready to award a prize, it’s allegedly programmed to overshoot the keyhole — even if the player hit the button at the correct time — and force the player to lose. This is demonstrated in some videos on YouTube: A player named Claw Craziness suggested that player can tell when a machine is not ready to pay out a prize, if they know the secrets.

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

This is a well known feature - yes feature - of these machines.

Let’s say you’re an arcade owner and you’re filling two claw machines with prizes. One you fill with expensive big stuffed animals, the other with cheap candy. How do you make a profit from both machines?
You set the win rates. It’s literally a design feature, and the user manual encourages operators to calculate how many pulls it’ll take for each item to pay fo itself and set the difficulty just above that.

What the fuck two chinks is china cloning humans now

 

[Game master arino]

>Teleports one space away
heh nothin personal kid...

 

[Haramburger]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_sSOOou8Eno>Teleports one space away
heh nothin personal kid...

underrated feature of this, or any other prize-based game is the secondary thrill of trying to select your prize with the game's shitty interface. I haven't played Stacker in years thanks to coof but I remember it being a single big button; cycling through the prizes racks with a single button, a blinking light as your only indicator and a timer is both stressful and an unexpected high coming off the excitement of actually winning something you want.

 

[Sneed's Feed And Seed]

I knew somebody who would go to Dave and Busters and game the ticket machines, win a ton, buy prizes like ps4s and sell them. His secrets? Find the manuals for the machines online and get an idea of how often the machine lets somebody score big, usually half an hour. And watch other people on the machines. After a bunch of losses, machines become more likely to pay out.

I'd do something like this at a local pizza place about 2 decades ago. Won me, amongst other things, a screwdriver set that I still use to this day. After a win I'd "celebrate" by nursing a root beer until some other sucker came in and played the "hit the light, win a prize" machine. That or I'd play some X-Men vs Street Fighter. I got bretty gud at that game thanks to redemption machines.

To be fair, if the owner had come out and asked me to stop, I would have, but I have a feeling they kept me around -because- I'd feed their machines quarters.

 

[Dysnomia]

Some are more fair than others. I've personally won a PSP out of a Stacker machine, that was a sick win. It is a game of skill... when enough money has been spent to allow the machine to pay-out. Key Master and Cut The String have always looked like total bullshit even if the money threshold was ready though. I wouldn't play these things with zero prizes and free-play on, at least Stacker is an actual fucking game.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CNQ4nRNmQmE

I've seen a few YouTube videos where someone won a PSP or another nice prize. So while it's not impossible I feel like the company doesn't want to spend too much money on prizes.

Are slot machines similar? I won $1500 once. I'd go with my aunt who would stick her cards in the machines for comps. So as I was playing I was earning her freebies. So I always wondered if comp cards gave slightly more wins because the casino knows you'll keep feeding the machine for a free room.

Interestingly enough there's a 100% win rubber ducky machine at one of the malls here for the little kiddies. I guess because rubber duckies are cheap to make and mom doesn't have to spend $10 for a three cent toy so Junior stops making a scene.

 

[The Lawgiver]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vXBfwgwT1nQ
There's a guy on youtube who exposed a similar thing with that machine where the lights go around in a circle and you have to hit the button to stop it between two points to win tickets and prizes.

He built a machine that could detect the light and press the button then concealed the whole device in a backpack.

What he found was the light did not consistently move between the two points even when the button was consistently pushed no matter how much timing was added into the button pusher.

In other words it wasn't a pure skill game rather it was determined by other factors.

this dude's just shit at understanding when to hit the button every arcade i've been to in my life it's been really easy to get the fucking jackpot one if you time it right of course it doesn't line up with the lights the things are meant to show where the electronic marker is going rather than where it is.

Anyways yeah the rigging thing has been a well known thing but it's less the companies themselves rigging it and more employees of arcades tweaking the settings like tightness and sensors. nearly every time I've tried a key in the hole game and got a key in the hole and it literally just stops before going in the hole like there was something blocking it and reverses. fuck that shit man. There was an arcade chance machine that was actually really cool back in the 2000s where you were basically guaranteed a prize each time that was just like a rotating series of slots with stuff in it and I got some really fucking good ps2 games and dvds from it back in the day thanks to timing it right. That one felt a lot less rigged than other machines of it's kind but not all places put the quality stuff in it.

 

[An Ghost]

I'd do something like this at a local pizza place about 2 decades ago. Won me, amongst other things, a screwdriver set that I still use to this day. After a win I'd "celebrate" by nursing a root beer until some other sucker came in and played the "hit the light, win a prize" machine. That or I'd play some X-Men vs Street Fighter. I got bretty gud at that game thanks to redemption machines.

To be fair, if the owner had come out and asked me to stop, I would have, but I have a feeling they kept me around -because- I'd feed their machines quarters.

Oh my friend has been kicked out of a few places. Usually takes them to small claims court just to get whatever cash is left on his playing cards back.

Are slot machines similar? I won $1500 once. I'd go with my aunt who would stick her cards in the machines for comps. So as I was playing I was earning her freebies. So I always wondered if comp cards gave slightly more wins because the casino knows you'll keep feeding the machine for a free room.

Probably. A slot machine is probably friendlier because you can't fuck up a pull like you can a claw game. No casino would ever let something like random chance take away their hard swindled cash, so the idea is machine knows how much it's fed, and will only ever spit out about half of what is put in, casino keeps the rest. This created the idea of "hot machines" that after a bunch of losses, they'll be more likely to pay out.

 

[Rion]

I've seen these machines scam people for so long that the prizes inside lost value. Theres one at a movie theater I used to go to as a kid that still has a PSP in it.

 

[Kheapathic]

If gambling is electronic, its rigged. Any one with a brain knows that.

Power level, used to work IT for a casino in Nevada. The only thing separating claw machines from Casinos is legislation. Gambling machines (of all types, to include slot machines) are required by law to pay out a certain percentage of what they take in to stay legal; otherwise the Nevada Gaming Comission can shut you down. And they can schedule a huge jackpot; wait for a big event weekend, between the hours of X and Y; generate hype, gets people to spend more. They have taking your money down to a science. Table games (Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, etc) are more "honest," but still a game of chance.

Claw machines are "games of chance" found in places like amusement parks and family fun centers (because Arcades no longer exist). And like the article says; they're programmed when to allow someone to win.

The only difference is if there's a law or enforcement branch saying what the payout rate should be. This Consoomer needs to fuck off.

Obligatory; the house always wins, the only winning move is not to play, they don't pay taxes on this building by losing money... Or be the one rigging the game.

 

[Joshuan Moon]

Power level, used to work IT for a casino in Nevada. The only thing separating claw machines from Casinos is legislation. Gambling machines (of all types, to include slot machines) are required by law to pay out a certain percentage of what they take in to stay legal; otherwise the Nevada Gaming Comission can shut you down. And they can schedule a huge jackpot; wait for a big event weekend, between the hours of X and Y; generate hype, gets people to spend more. They have taking your money down to a science. Table games (Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, etc) are more "honest," but still a game of chance.

Claw machines are "games of chance" found in places like amusement parks and family fun centers (because Arcades no longer exist). And like the article says; they're programmed when to allow someone to win.

The only difference is if there's a law or enforcement branch saying what the payout rate should be. This Consoomer needs to fuck off.

Obligatory; the house always wins, the only winning move is not to play, they don't pay taxes on this building by losing money... Or be the one rigging the game.

The house always wins. Whether it be slots or table games the game is engineered to give an edge to the house. Some will win but more will lose and over time means profit.

Rigging would be an undisclosed disadvantage that makes the game impossible or near impossible to win. At least with casinos its freely acknowledged that the games are purely ones of chance (although skill based gaming is becoming more of a thing). I wouldn't say casino games are "rigged" in that sense of the word. Table games have shit like 0 (or 00 or fucking even 000 now) in roulette and box cars push on a don't pass in craps or blackjack with shitty rules to get an advantage. Slots basically do the same just in electronic form.

A modern slot machine at its core is simply a hardware RNG attached to a button. The RNG is constantly updating and when you push the button it grabs the RNG value at that instant. This part is truly random, there is no queue of predetermined outcomes. The machine isn't tracking wins and losses waiting to pay out at the correct time. The outcome is entirely dependent on the exact instant you push the button. The variation between games is in how the game is designed to respond to the value you get. There may be a million equally likely RNG values but only so many have been assigned to be winners. What gets displayed to you on the screen or reels is just a pretty show engineered to make you think anything but chance might be playing a role so you keep pressing the button.

Commercial gambling is regulated (so too are "skill" games but again gambling doesn't lie about what it is as badly) so the machines have to be designed in a certain way. And the State will audit code and hardware to ensure compliance. As you say they're legally required to have a minimum payout rate, but that is merely determined via calculation based on the probability of getting a winning outcome and the size of those wins. It's calculated over a long period of time. This doesn't mean the machine is tracking how much it paid out in order to time a jackpot. There is a nonzero chance that every single pull is a jackpot and there is a significantly much larger nonzero chance that every pull is a loser. But the reality is that over time the machine will take in more than it give out.

The thing with slots is that there isn't a switch inside them that can be flipped to change the payout rate. Normally that requires a physical hardware change. However with network attached slots I believe it is possible to change the games payouts more dynamically. From what I'm aware however this isn't something that can be done on the fly and requires taking the machine out of operation for some time. Maybe things are different from when I last was digging into how casinos work.

 

[Kheapathic]

The thing with slots is that there isn't a switch inside them that can be flipped to change the payout rate. Normally that requires a physical hardware change. However with network attached slots I believe it is possible to change the games payouts more dynamically. From what I'm aware however this isn't something that can be done on the fly and requires taking the machine out of operation for some time. Maybe things are different from when I last was digging into how casinos work.

I will tell you right now, any casino worth their salt (even smaller ones) have every electronic game networked together. Those are all hooked up to a server cluster that knows every single coin denomination that gets ran through every machine and every pay out that happens. Everything is controlled electronically through the servers and the software it runs; I don't know how many different gaming solutions exist, but the one my property ran with was by Bally's. Sure the machines may have a bit of autonomy, but if you look at any slot machine from the past decade or so, there's no physical parts on it; the entire thing is just a big TV screen and can make whatever image it wants to appear, and if the server says no, it won't.

But as I said before, they have how to take your money down to a science. They'll take a good portion of your money, and drip feed it it back before taking even more. Because the longer you sit down, the more likely you'll partake of the free alcohol, which makes your judgement worse and worse. If there's a big concert on a weekend, throw some random a bone and let them hit the progressive jackpot during peak hours, because that gets people's attention and makes them want to play. The house always wins because they play the long game and have plans laid out months in advance, and those machines will pay what they're told to, when they're told to.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Even as a kid, I knew these things were mostly rigged. The idea of a PSP dropping onto hard flooring scared the crap out of me, too. Oh cool, my Birth By Sleep machine just shattered before I could even play it.

Better off just playing that light gun game full of content warnings.

 

[Joshuan Moon]

I will tell you right now, any casino worth their salt (even smaller ones) have every electronic game networked together. Those are all hooked up to a server cluster that knows every single coin denomination that gets ran through every machine and every pay out that happens. Everything is controlled electronically through the servers and the software it runs; I don't know how many different gaming solutions exist, but the one my property ran with was by Bally's. Sure the machines may have a bit of autonomy, but if you look at any slot machine from the past decade or so, there's no physical parts on it; the entire thing is just a big TV screen and can make whatever image it wants to appear, and if the server says no, it won't.

But as I said before, they have how to take your money down to a science. They'll take a good portion of your money, and drip feed it it back before taking even more. Because the longer you sit down, the more likely you'll partake of the free alcohol, which makes your judgement worse and worse. If there's a big concert on a weekend, throw some random a bone and let them hit the progressive jackpot during peak hours, because that gets people's attention and makes them want to play. The house always wins because they play the long game and have plans laid out months in advance, and those machines will pay what they're told to, when they're told to.

For networking, I mean the game itself being accessible via the network rather than the machine having some level of network access. Obviously the player card and game statistics are going to be sent to a server but the portions of the machine that run the game were at one time isolated to its own little island. I think the first networked game in Vegas was at Aria when it opened. Which was near 15 years ago at this point so I'm sure all the new games are fully tied into the servers now.

Like you said they literally have it down to a science and that science part is pretty fascinating to me. I'll still pretend to believe in a cosmic force of luck and take my "free" drinks though. It's more fun that way.

 

[idosometimes]

Slot machines use weighting of symbols, wheel wedges, etc to make odds worse. They are also pure chance so you do not have to worry about someone using some public machine vision library to create a phone app that signals when to hit the button.

The only machines that have a predetermined payout structure are VLTs. They function like scratch off lottery tickets or pull tabs, only with a drum of millions and millions of "tickets".