Big Time Gaming's history from its 2011 founding through its 2021 acquisition by Evolution, exactly how the Megaways mechanic it invented and licenses to hundreds of other studios actually works, its further proprietary mechanics (Megaclusters, Megapays, Megapots, Megadozer, Megaquads), its most notable titles ranked by RTP and max win, and how it compares to the other providers covered on this site

Big Time Gaming holds a genuinely unusual position among the studios covered on this site: rather than simply building slots, it invented a mechanic — Megaways — that has since been licensed to hundreds of other developers and now underpins titles across this site's Gonzo's Quest, NoLimit City, and Megaways Slots Explained guides. This guide covers the studio's history, exactly how Megaways works mechanically, its further proprietary systems, its own most notable titles, and how it compares to the other studios covered elsewhere on this site.

Big Time Gaming's History

Big Time Gaming was founded in 2011 by Nik Robinson, headquartered in Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia. The studio built its reputation over the following five years before releasing the title that would define it: Bonanza, launched in 2016, introduced the Megaways mechanic to the market and is widely credited as establishing the format's best-known early expression. Evolution acquired Big Time Gaming in 2021, bringing the studio into the same ownership group as NetEnt, NoLimit City, and Red Tiger — all covered in their own dedicated guides on this site. This means Evolution now owns four of the studios covered across this site's provider hub guides, with Big Time Gaming retaining its own distinct brand and product identity within Evolution's wider slots portfolio, the same arrangement NoLimit City and Red Tiger operate under.

How Megaways Actually Works

Megaways is a variable-reel mechanic, not a fixed payline or fixed-ways system — the core innovation covered in more general terms in this site's dedicated Megaways Slots Explained guide, but worth walking through specifically here given BTG is the mechanic's inventor. On each spin, every reel independently displays a different number of symbols — typically between two and seven per reel across a standard six-reel Megaways game — rather than a fixed grid where every reel always shows the same number of rows. This variable symbol count is what generates the format's headline "ways to win" figure: with six reels each capable of showing up to seven symbols, the maximum possible combination works out to 117,649 ways to win on a single spin, dramatically more than any fixed-payline structure could offer. Most Megaways titles pair this variable-reel structure with a cascading (avalanche) win mechanic — covered in more depth in this site's dedicated Slot Bonus Features guide — where winning symbols are removed and replaced by new ones falling into place, often with an increasing multiplier attached to each consecutive cascade within the same spin.

Megaways is licensed to hundreds of developers worldwide, making it one of the most widely adopted proprietary slot mechanics in the industry — the same licensing relationship already covered from the licensee side in this site's Red Tiger guide (Gonzo's Quest Megaways) and NoLimit City guide, and covered more generally across the wider format in the Megaways Slots Explained guide. This scale of third-party adoption is genuinely unusual for a proprietary game mechanic — most studios keep their signature systems exclusive to their own catalogue, where BTG has instead built a licensing business around making Megaways available to competitors.

Beyond Megaways: BTG's Further Proprietary Mechanics

Big Time Gaming has continued building distinct proprietary systems beyond its original Megaways format, each solving a different design problem:

Megaclusters replaces Megaways' variable-reel-and-payline structure with an expanding cluster-pay grid instead. The main game starts on a 4×4 grid; landing a winning cluster splits each winning symbol's position into four smaller positions, expanding the grid up to a maximum of 8×8 in the base game. The free spins feature raises the stakes further, starting at 8×8 and expanding up to a maximum 16×16 grid — up to sixteen times the original playing field's size. Star Clusters, released in June 2020, was the format's inaugural title.

Megapays layers a shared, four-tier progressive jackpot network on top of a base Megaways game, triggered by a random feature (independent of bet size) that drops players into a Las Vegas-themed hold-and-respin round. Landing enough Megapays symbols during that round climbs a ladder through Mini, Midi, and Major jackpot tiers up to the top Mega Jackpot tier, which requires 15 or more collected symbols to win. Unlike a standalone progressive, multiple separate Megapays-branded titles feed into the same shared jackpot pool, so the jackpot isn't tied to a single specific game the way some other studios' progressive systems work.

Megapots, Megadozer, and Megaquads round out BTG's further proprietary systems — respectively exploring alternative progressive jackpot delivery, expanded dynamic win structures, and a format that merges multiple slot grids into a single spin. These sit alongside Megaways and Megaclusters as further evidence of BTG's pattern of building and naming distinct mechanical systems, rather than iterating on one format alone.

Why Megaways Became So Widely Licensed

The scale of Megaways' third-party adoption is worth putting in context. Most studios covered on this site that have built a signature proprietary mechanic — NoLimit City's xNudge and xSplit, ELK Studios' CollectR, Red Tiger's Daily Drop Jackpots network — keep that system exclusive to their own catalogue, using it as a point of differentiation from competitors rather than a product to license out. BTG took a different commercial approach with Megaways, opening the mechanic to licensing from very early in its life, which is a significant part of why a reader is likely to encounter Megaways-branded titles from a very wide range of studios (Red Tiger, NoLimit City, Pragmatic Play, and many others beyond those covered individually on this site) rather than treating it as one studio's occasional format among many. This licensing-first approach is also why Megaways-branded titles vary so much in how faithfully they extend the original mechanic — some licensees, like Red Tiger's Gonzo's Quest Megaways, combine Megaways with an entirely separate proprietary system from a third studio, where others apply it more simply to a single new theme.

Where to Play Big Time Gaming Slots

Given the studio's position within Evolution's wider group and the sheer scale of Megaways' third-party licensing, BTG's own titles and Megaways-branded titles more broadly are available across the substantial majority of UK-licensed casino operators. Distinguishing a genuine BTG-original release from a licensed Megaways title built by a different studio matters when specifically looking for BTG's own catalogue — checking a game's information screen or provider listing at a specific operator is the reliable way to confirm which studio actually built a given Megaways title, rather than assuming the branding alone identifies BTG as the developer.

Big Time Gaming's Most Notable Titles, Ranked by Max Win

Bonanza remains the studio's most historically significant release despite several later titles offering higher headline max-win figures — it's the title that introduced Megaways to the market in 2016 and established the template every subsequent Megaways title, from BTG's own catalogue and hundreds of licensees alike, has built on since. White Rabbit carries the highest RTP on this list at 97.24%, worth cross-referencing against this site's Best Payout / Highest RTP Slots guide. Monopoly Megaways connects to the wider Monopoly-branded slot catalogue already covered in this site's dedicated Monopoly Slots guide, itself owned by Light & Wonder — a useful reminder that Megaways licensing crosses studio-ownership lines even on branded titles built around the same intellectual property.

How Big Time Gaming Compares to Other Providers Covered on This Site

Positioned against Red Tiger (a fellow Evolution-owned studio, covered in a dedicated guide on this site), the relationship is licensor-to-licensee rather than a direct competitive comparison — Red Tiger's Gonzo's Quest Megaways licenses BTG's mechanic and combines it with NetEnt's separate Avalanche system, making it one of the clearest examples of Megaways being built into another studio's title rather than played as a BTG-original release. Positioned against NoLimit City (also an Evolution-owned sibling studio, covered in a dedicated guide on this site), the contrast is one of design philosophy rather than mechanics alone — NoLimit City licenses Megaways occasionally but is defined by its own xNudge and xSplit systems, where BTG's identity is built specifically around the Megaways family and its proprietary derivatives. Positioned against NetEnt (the fourth Evolution-owned studio covered on this site), BTG's variable-reel approach to generating win combinations is a fundamentally different mechanical philosophy from NetEnt's more traditional fixed-payline and cluster-pays catalogue, illustrating how differently the studios under a single ownership group can still play.

Big Time Gaming and UK Licensing

As with every developer covered on this site, Big Time Gaming's titles operate exclusively through UKGC-licensed casino operators for UK players, subject to the standard UK regulatory framework — RTP disclosure requirements, the mandatory online slots stake limits covered in this site's Penny & Low Stake Slots guide, and the minimum spin-speed and autoplay rules referenced elsewhere on this site. Megapays titles specifically are worth checking for jackpot contribution disclosure on a given operator's game information screen, in the same way any UK-licensed jackpot-network title requires checking rather than assuming a single fixed RTP applies universally.

A Practical Checklist Before Playing Big Time Gaming Slots

Understand which specific mechanic a title uses before assuming they all play the same way — a Megaways title, a Megaclusters title, and a Megapays title behave very differently despite sharing BTG's "Mega-" naming convention across all three.

Don't assume every Megaways title you play is a BTG-original release — the mechanic is licensed to hundreds of developers, so plenty of Megaways titles you'll encounter (including on this site, via Gonzo's Quest Megaways) are built by other studios entirely.

Check whether a Megapays title's jackpot pool is shared across multiple games — several separate titles typically feed into the same jackpot network, unlike a single-game progressive.

Compare RTP and max win figures before assuming a higher headline multiplier means a better overall game — Lil' Devil's 100,504x max win sits alongside a broadly similar RTP to several lower-max-win titles on this list.

Who Big Time Gaming Slots Genuinely Suit

Good fit: players specifically drawn to the mechanical variety of Megaways, Megaclusters, and Megapays as genuinely distinct systems, and anyone interested in playing the format's originating titles rather than only its many licensed derivatives.

Less suited: players who prefer a single, consistent, easily-learned mechanic across an entire studio's catalogue — BTG's range of proprietary systems, each with its own distinct rules, means more upfront learning per title than some more mechanically consistent studios covered on this site.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Big Time Gaming founded, and by whom?

2011, by Nik Robinson, headquartered in Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia.

Who owns Big Time Gaming now?

Evolution, which acquired the studio in 2021 — bringing it into the same ownership group as NetEnt, NoLimit City, and Red Tiger, all also covered in dedicated guides on this site.

What is Megaways, and who invented it?

A variable-reel slot mechanic where each reel independently shows a different number of symbols on every spin (typically two to seven), generating up to 117,649 ways to win on a standard six-reel game. Big Time Gaming invented the format, launching it with Bonanza in 2016.

Can other studios use Megaways?

Yes — Megaways is licensed to hundreds of developers worldwide, which is why titles like Red Tiger's Gonzo's Quest Megaways and NoLimit City's own Megaways releases exist despite being built by different studios entirely.

What is Megaclusters, and how is it different from Megaways?

Megaclusters replaces Megaways' variable-reel structure with an expanding cluster-pay grid — starting at 4×4 in the base game and expanding up to 8×8, or up to 16×16 during free spins, as winning symbol positions split into smaller quadrants. Star Clusters (June 2020) was the first Megaclusters title.

How does the Megapays jackpot mechanic work?

A random feature (independent of bet size) triggers a hold-and-respin round where collecting Megapays symbols climbs a ladder through four jackpot tiers — Mini, Midi, Major, and Mega — with the top tier requiring 15 or more collected symbols. Multiple separate Megapays titles share the same jackpot pool, rather than each game running its own isolated jackpot.

What is Big Time Gaming's most historically important title?

Bonanza, released in 2016 — the title that introduced the Megaways mechanic to the market and established the template every subsequent Megaways release has built on since, whether from BTG's own catalogue or one of its hundreds of licensees.

This guide is for informational purposes. RTP, volatility, and max win figures are as reported across multiple third-party sources and may vary slightly by platform configuration — always check the individual game's information screen for current, exact figures before playing. 18+ only. UKGC-licensed operators only. Gambling problem? BeGambleAware.org | National Gambling Helpline 0808 8020 133. Information correct as of October 2026.