Have you ever earned a trophy in a casino game only to later find out it was a glitch?

Heck yeah, it happens all the time. I’ve covered dozens of slot-machine glitches like this in Mega Moolah and other progressives. It’s typically a coding snafu.

In another extreme example, one player hit a jackpot when playing a faulty version of Gonzo’s Quest. The machine gave the player 50, 000, instead of the 500 that he really owed. Casino officials discovered the error after 24 hours, and ultimately voided the prize.

What do casinos do? It is complicated. Depending on how they are regulated, casinos may be forced by law to accept the bug as valid for 24 or 48 hours (a long time in Internet time). Some allow the winner to keep the gain if they report the problem of their own accord. Other casinos’ rules clearly state that “unfortunate outcomes” will not be paid.

Most important advice? If you get a malfunctioning payout, don’t take it. Ask someone to look at the machine’s records. It’ll make life easier all around.

Oh yeah! That happens once in a while. Someone gets an unintended bonus or an award for something they didn’t really win. Sometimes it’s the result of a software defect, sometimes a configuration error on a particular bonus round. For example, a player may inadvertently trigger a progressive jackpot pay-out event because of a slot machine configuration error. It’s not hard for most casinos to track all of its transactions – they will find out about this. How they respond depends upon circumstances. If it is their fault, they will probably allow the player to keep the winnings, especially if it is small. If it is significant, that one will be reversed no matter what. Moral of the story: always verify your game configuration and pay tables before releasing a new game to the floor.

In my role as an expert, I am not familiar with such events, but they do occur from time to time. Players either get to keep their small winnings in such instances, or casinos revert large payouts. Since Mega Moolah or Wheel of Fortune are popular games, such issues are commonly reported when they occur. On forums, tell readers what happened and how the casino dealt with the situation – people love hearing about it.

Yeah, sometimes those things do occur: a programming bug in a crappy old game that nobody supports anymore. Sometimes a slot will pay bonus after bonus and the progressive will come up on every spin. The casino will cancel the prize; they rarely allow players to collect such winnings from a broken machine. People tend to accept that it’s a software glitch rather than a way to cheat the system. You just need solid T& Cs and consistent QA programs to ensure this doesn’t become a serious problem.