Written by: James Awland Published on: 10 August 2026 Last updated: 10 August 2026
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The Logo of Big Time Gaming
Tags: Slots Software Providers
Read time: 8 min

Who Big Time Gaming Is

Big Time Gaming (BTG) opened in Sydney in 2011, working out of an office in Surry Hills, New South Wales. Nik Robinson is the founder and chief executive, Huw McIntosh leads the technical side, and Ian Schmidt leads creative.

Robinson had been round the industry a while by then, as he founded New Tech Media in 1996, which News Corp acquired, merged with Orbis and turned into OpenBet. The studio has never been large, and you can see some of its biggest milestones below:

Year Milestone Why It Mattered
2011 BTG founded in Sydney. A small studio with no scale advantage over its rivals.
2015 Dragon Born, the first Megaways slot. Six reels with a symbol count that changes every spin.
2016 Bonanza launches on 7 December. The mechanic reaches a mainstream audience.
2018 First licence signed, with Blueprint Gaming. Megaways becomes a product rival studios can buy.
2021 Evolution acquires BTG. Valued at up to 450 million euros.

BTG still releases only a handful of titles a year. In 2015, it had no scale advantage over any of the companies whose standard format it was about to displace. Its catalogue contains around 90 video slot titles, including features like bonus modes, Win Exchange, MegaClusters, and Megapots.

The Beginning, Dragon Born, Then Bonanza

This is the software provider who invented Megaways. More precisely, Dragon Born arrived in 2015 as the world’s first Megaways slot. The mechanic is also known as a ‘random reel modifier’ where six reels each show anywhere from two to seven symbols on every spin. The Megaways system gives each spin the potential to create up to 117,649 ways to win.

BTG’s own announcement framed the wider operator rollout as ‘Rolling into 2016’, so the debut year you see quoted depends on whether someone is counting the game or the rollout. However, Bonanza was the breakout, launching on 7 December 2016. The studio’s announcement describes it as combining Reactive Reels with Megaways, plus a free spins feature with an unlimited multiplier that the reactive reels increase.

Bonanza was designed with Twitch streamers in mind, and compared the tension of the gameplay to a horse race. The OMNI engine behind it ran at 60 frames per second. Most accounts of the game leave that out, and it explains a lot about how it plays.

A slot designed partly for viewers watching someone else play must hold attention between outcomes, which presents a different challenge from designing solely for the person spinning the reels. Overall, Bonanza quickly became a benchmark online slot and remains available at many British casino sites.

The Revolutionary Licensing Decision

The first Megaways licensing agreement was announced on 25 April 2018, with Blueprint Gaming, part of Germany’s Gauselmann Group. Blueprint gained the right to design and develop its own games using the mechanic, including titles built on its brand licences for ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, ‘The Chase’ and ‘Tipping Point’.

A signature mechanic is normally the one thing a studio keeps to itself, because it is the reason an operator books your game instead of someone else’s. BTG turned it into a product and sold access to its competitors, which it could only do because the mechanic was protected. BTG describes the Megaways system as patented, and Megaways is the company’s trademark, so it could be licensed out rather than guarded as a trade secret.

Robinson said Megaways ‘will eventually dwarf the standard 5×3 format of recent years’, and noted interest from other suppliers who wanted to add the mechanic to their own ranges. He expected the Blueprint agreement to lay the foundation for similar deals, and it did.

Licensees since 2018 include Pragmatic Play, Red Tiger, NetEnt, Inspired Gaming, Relax Gaming and iSoftBet, and over a dozen providers now build to the mechanic. Several game studios rebuilt existing slots under these licensing arrangements. For example, Red Tiger put NetEnt’s 2010 Gonzo’s Quest onto a Megaways grid in July 2020.

What Megaways Did to the Slot Lobby

It took years for Megaways to evolve from a game mechanic into a recognised brand. Players started picking games by mechanic rather than by studio, and the world of online casinos turned into a lobby filter and a search term in its own right.

Slot marketing had run on studio names and branded tie-ins before that. A licensed mechanic sitting in the game title is a different proposition, and studios that had nothing to do with inventing it now sell games on the strength of the name. You can see the effect the moment you sort the different types of slot games in a casino lobby by Megaways instead of by provider.

BTG then ran the same playbook again with MegaClusters, Megaquads and Megapots. Each mechanic is named according to the same pattern, and each is pitched as something a licensee can buy into rather than a feature buried inside one game.

Significance for UK Players

Since October 2021, UK Gambling Commission rules have required online slots in Britain to have a minimum spin duration of 2.5 seconds, while autoplay, turbo and slam-stop are banned outright. Those rules apply to every online slot licensed here, Megaways titles included.

In other words, a cascading round has to resolve at its own pace and could not be sped up. That is a genuine difference between playing one of these games here and watching a clip recorded in another market.

The spin-speed requirement applies to games supplied for the British market, with both suppliers and operators responsible for meeting UKGC standards. In June 2026 the UKGC settled with games supplier Stakelogic for £122,835 after one of its slots was found running at 1.97 seconds between spins. Re-testing the whole British online casino market turned up 15 more errors by timing the games with a manual stopwatch.

Megaways titles are typically high volatility, so long dry spells are normal, and the headline ways-to-win figure tells you nothing about how often a game pays. There is ongoing debate about how high- and low-variance slots can feel over a session, but outcomes ultimately come down to chance.

Return to player (RTP) varies between builds too. Whoever builds the game sets the RTP rate, so two Megaways titles from different studios can carry different figures while sharing the mechanic and the branding. Some titles are even released in several RTP configurations and the casino operator chooses which one to run. For instance, Gonzo’s Quest Megaways exists in four RTP options, from 90.71% to 96.00%.

Check the Number, Not the Name

Let’s face it – the Megaways label tells you how the reels behave, not what the game returns. Always open the game’s information panel and read the RTP printed there, because the same title can feature a different figure at a different casino. The full guide to RTP explains how it should be interpreted.

Big Time Gaming Under Evolution

The next major step in the evolution of online slots was on 12 April 2021. Then, Evolution announced that it had agreed to acquire Big Time Gaming for a total consideration of up to 450 million euros.

Of the 220 million euros paid upfront, 80 million was cash and the rest came in newly issued Evolution shares, with earn-out payments of up to 230 million euros tied to BTG’s EBITDA for 2022/23 and 2023/24. The deal completed on 30 June 2021.

A live casino company paying that for a studio releasing a handful of games a year was buying intellectual property rather than output. It got the patents and the trademark, plus every licence agreement signed since 2018.

Megaways games from BTG and its licensees now run across the slot sites we review. The software provider has continued to operate and release under Evolution, with new Megapots titles shipping in 2025 and 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

This blog post is at the end, so here are the questions players ask most often about Big Time Gaming and Megaways. Find more about this trademark and what sets it apart from other top software providers in the next paragraphs.

🎯 Who invented Megaways slots?

Big Time Gaming (BTG) is the game studio who invented Megaways. It is an Australian studio founded in Sydney in 2011. Its 2015 release Dragon Born was the first Megaways slot ever released, and Bonanza, launched on 7 December 2016, pushed the mechanic into the mainstream.

Is Megaways a trademark?

Yes, Megaways is a Big Time Gaming trademark, and the studio describes the system behind it as patented. That is why rival providers need a licence agreement before they can build Megaways games of their own. This is what made the 2018 Blueprint deal significant for 'Megaways' as a trademark.

Which studios make Megaways slots?

Although Megaways began with Dragon Born and Bonanza games, Blueprint Gaming signed the first licence in April 2018. Licensees since then include Pragmatic Play, Red Tiger, NetEnt, Inspired Gaming, Relax Gaming and iSoftBet, and over a dozen providers now hold rights to the mechanic. BTG still builds and releases its own Megaways titles alongside them.

Does Big Time Gaming still make slots after the Evolution takeover?

Yes, Evolution announced the acquisition on 12 April 2021 and completed it on 30 June 2021, in a deal worth up to 450 million euros. BTG continues to operate and release games under Evolution, with new Megapots titles appearing in 2025 and 2026.

Are all Megaways slots the same?

No, the studio that builds the game sets its RTP and its volatility, so two Megaways titles can play very differently even though they share the mechanic and the name. For example, some titles have high volatility, while the ways-to-win figure describes how the reels can line up, not how often a game pays.

Sources & Further Reading

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