Blueprint Gaming: the complete provider guide

The UK studio behind Fishin' Frenzy - Merkur backing, the Jackpot King network, licensed TV franchises, and how its RTP positioning honestly compares to the wider market

Blueprint Gaming is the developer behind Fishin' Frenzy, covered in full in a separate guide on this site, alongside a 200+ title portfolio spanning original content and licensed franchises like Deal or No Deal and The Goonies. This guide covers how the studio actually operates: its ownership under German gaming giant Gauselmann Group (Merkur), the Jackpot King progressive network that ties its slots together, its role as one of the first licensees of the Megaways mechanic, and an honest look at where its games sit on RTP relative to the wider market.

Company background

Blueprint Gaming was founded in 2001 by Daren Breese, based in Newark, UK, initially focused on servicing the land-based gaming market - physical slot machines in arcades and casinos, not online content. The company's shift toward online development began around 2008, as internet casinos started gaining real traction, with its first online slot launching in 2009.

The Gauselmann Group acquisition. In 2008, Germany's Gauselmann Group - the parent company behind Merkur, a major European gaming conglomerate with over 50 years of land-based gaming experience - acquired an initial stake in Blueprint. By 2012, Blueprint was fully brought under the Merkur corporate umbrella. This ownership structure remains in place today, and it's genuinely significant: Blueprint's UK-based development team operates with the backing of a large, financially stable German parent company, providing R&D resources and international distribution reach that an independent, standalone studio typically wouldn't have access to.

Licensing timeline. Blueprint received its UK Gambling Commission licence in February 2013, followed by Malta Gaming Authority certification in 2019 (licence number MGA/B2B/684/2019). The studio also holds licences from Alderney, Gibraltar, and the Isle of Man - a genuinely broad spread of major European regulatory jurisdictions. Around the same period as its MGA licensing, Blueprint also acquired Livewire Gaming, a smaller gambling industry product developer, further consolidating capability and talent within the wider Gauselmann-backed structure.

Scale and reach

Blueprint's online portfolio spans more than 200 titles, a meaningfully more consistent figure across sources than several competing studios' catalogue sizes, covering video slots, table games, and jackpot titles with high maximum multipliers. Beyond online, Blueprint's land-based heritage remains genuinely significant - its games run on over 100,000 physical gaming terminals across Germany, the UK, and Italy, reflecting the dual-channel land-based-and-online business model the Gauselmann ownership specifically supports.

Language and currency support spans 18 to 30+ languages depending on the specific source, and more than 30 currencies - a genuinely global reach for a studio most players primarily associate with the UK market specifically.

Beyond the franchise titles, Blueprint's original portfolio spans a genuine range of themes and RTP levels worth knowing about specifically. Winstar, a space-themed slot with a progressive jackpot, carries a 96.43% RTP - toward the higher end of Blueprint's typical range. Worms Reloaded, based on the classic mobile game, runs at a notably lower 92.7% RTP - a useful reminder that even within one studio's catalogue, RTP varies meaningfully by title, and the general portfolio-wide characterisation covered later in this guide shouldn't be read as implying every individual game sits at the same level.

Megaways: Blueprint was among the first licensees

This connects directly to this site's Fishin' Frenzy guide, which covers Fishin' Frenzy Megaways as part of that game's wider family. Blueprint secured a licensing deal with Big Time Gaming - the Australian studio that originated the Megaways mechanic - in 2017 or 2018 depending on the specific source, making Blueprint one of the earliest studios outside BTG itself to build Megaways titles. The mechanic allows for up to 117,649 ways to win through randomly changing reel configurations on each spin, and Blueprint's specific implementations - Fishin' Frenzy Megaways chief among them - are widely regarded as rivalling Big Time Gaming's own output in quality, a genuinely notable achievement given how technically demanding the licensed mechanic is to implement well.

Jackpot King: Blueprint's proprietary progressive network, in full detail

This is Blueprint's direct equivalent to the kind of studio-wide promotional infrastructure covered in this site's Pragmatic Play guide, though structured quite differently, and worth explaining precisely rather than in general terms.

The three-tier structure. Jackpot King links participating Blueprint slots across multiple operators into a shared progressive network, and specifically runs three simultaneous jackpot tiers rather than a single pool: the Royal tier is guaranteed to pay out before its value reaches $3,500; the Regal tier is guaranteed to drop before hitting $35,000; and the top Jackpot King prize itself is genuinely unlimited, with no forced payout ceiling - historically recording wins worth millions before being won. More than seventy Blueprint titles have carried Jackpot King eligibility since the network launched, giving players a meaningfully wide selection of games all feeding into and drawing from the same shared jackpot pools.

A real, documented win worth citing. In January 2024, a single King Kong Cash Even Bigger Bananas jackpot paid out over $5 million - a concrete, specific example of what the network's unlimited top tier can genuinely produce, rather than a purely theoretical maximum.

The pub machine heritage: why some Blueprint titles feel different

This is worth explaining directly, since it's a genuinely distinctive part of Blueprint's identity that separates several of its most recognisable titles from the rest of its portfolio. Blueprint's early years were spent building physical "pub fruit machines" for UK arcades and pubs, well before the company pivoted toward online development in 2008. Several of its most enduringly popular online titles - King Kong Cash, Slots O' Gold, and Genie Jackpots among them - began life specifically as physical pub machines, later ported into online slots rather than being built as online-first titles from the start.

Why this matters for how these specific games actually play. Games with this pub-machine lineage tend to carry a genuinely different design sensibility from Blueprint's more recent, online-first releases - simpler core mechanics, a stronger emphasis on straightforward wilds and multipliers over elaborate cascading or cluster systems, and an overall feel that UK players who grew up around physical fruit machines specifically recognise and respond to. This isn't a criticism of the format - it's precisely why these particular titles have remained consistently popular for so long, giving Blueprint a genuine base of UK player familiarity that newer, online-only studios have no equivalent way to build.

Signature mechanics and licensed franchises

Colossal Symbols are a recognisable Blueprint signature mechanic - oversized multi-tile symbols that can appear during regular spins and break apart into several smaller matching symbols, creating additional winning combinations from a single large symbol landing. This is a genuinely distinctive visual and mechanical signature that appears across a meaningful share of Blueprint's original portfolio.

Bonus buy and bonus gamble features are common across Blueprint's catalogue - letting players pay directly into a bonus round rather than triggering it through ordinary play, or risk a win on a gamble feature for a chance at a larger payout. Availability varies by specific title and by the regulatory jurisdiction you're playing in, consistent with the general bonus-buy availability principle covered in this site's guide to RTP and house edge.

Licensed TV and film franchises are a genuine differentiator relative to some competing studios, and Blueprint's portfolio in this specific area runs deep. Beyond Deal or No Deal and The Goonies, the studio holds licensing agreements for Ted, Rick and Morty, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, and Dumb and Dumber - a genuinely broad spread of recognisable film and TV brands most competing studios haven't matched at the same scale.

The Deal or No Deal franchise specifically has grown into multiple distinct titles, not just one slot - Deal or No Deal Megaways Jackpot King and Deal or No Deal: Banker's Boost Jackpot King are both currently active, the latter built around a "Golden Box" mechanic that steadily increases paddle values and can trigger a Banker's Call event, activating modifiers or launching the core Deal or No Deal bonus round with upgraded prizes, across 4,096 win lines and full Jackpot King network eligibility. The Goonies has received similar franchise expansion, with The Goonies Return Jackpot King and The Goonies Megaways Rapid Fire Jackpots both extending the original film-based slot into further variants.

The Goonies specifically features bonus rounds named after specific moments from the film (One-Eyed Willy's Treasure, Fratelli's Hideout) and carries a 96% RTP. This kind of licensed-IP approach gives Blueprint a genuinely different portfolio identity from studios that build exclusively original themes.

RTP positioning: an honest assessment

This is worth stating plainly rather than repeating purely promotional framing, since at least one detailed industry source characterises Blueprint's RTP positioning candidly: "competent but not differentiated on mathematical generosity." In practical terms, this means Blueprint's games generally support standard operator margins rather than standing out as an unusually player-favourable studio on RTP specifically - Fishin' Frenzy's own 96.12% RTP, covered in detail in this site's dedicated guide, sits squarely within this typical, unremarkable-but-solid range rather than at either extreme. This isn't a criticism so much as useful context: Blueprint's genuine strengths lie more in its Megaways implementations, its licensed franchise content, and the Jackpot King network than in offering meaningfully higher base RTP than competing studios.

How Blueprint compares to Pragmatic Play and Big Time Gaming directly

Given this site covers both Blueprint and Pragmatic Play as separate provider guides, a direct comparison is worth making explicit. Independent industry analysis positions Blueprint as sitting between high-volume studios like Pragmatic Play and smaller boutique developers - releasing at a more moderate pace than Pragmatic Play's rapid weekly output, but with a specific, genuine strength in jackpot systems (the Jackpot King network) and licensed franchise content that Pragmatic Play's more original-theme-focused portfolio doesn't match to the same degree.

On the Megaways mechanic specifically, a more precise three-way comparison is worth making. Blueprint licenses Megaways from Big Time Gaming (BTG), the mechanic's originator - meaning Blueprint's own Megaways releases are, structurally, BTG's underlying engine wrapped in Blueprint's own branding and IP, exactly the same licensing relationship covered in this site's Big Bass Bonanza guide regarding Pragmatic Play's own Megaways titles. Independent comparison suggests BTG's own original Megaways titles tend to lead on mechanical sophistication and can reach notably higher RTP configurations than either licensee studio typically offers. Blueprint's own Megaways adaptations, Fishin' Frenzy Megaways chief among them, instead compete specifically on headline max-win figures and strong UK player brand recognition - a genuinely different competitive strategy from trying to out-engineer the mechanic's original creator.

A specific figure worth flagging with appropriate caution. At least one recent source describes Fishin' Frenzy Megaways' maximum win as 50,000x stake, describing it as the highest max win in mainstream Megaways - a notably different figure from what this site's own dedicated Fishin' Frenzy guide currently documents for that specific variant. Given this discrepancy, treat the precise Megaways max-win figure as an area of genuine source disagreement, and verify directly against your specific casino's own game information screen rather than relying on any single cited figure, including either of this site's own guides, with full confidence.

Where Blueprint's games are actually available

Blueprint holds significant operator partnerships across both the UK and US markets. On the UK side, this includes Paddy Power, bet365, Ivy Casino, Sky Vegas, Coral, William Hill, and Ladbrokes - all reviewed in detail elsewhere on this site, and independent industry analysis specifically notes Blueprint's Jackpot King network carries particular strength at Sky Vegas, Coral, William Hill, and Ladbrokes specifically. On the US side, partnerships include BetMGM and DraftKings, also both covered in this site's US casino reviews, with Blueprint's US market expansion specifically accelerating through White Hat Gaming's licensing infrastructure across 14 states.

A note on responsible gambling tools, consistent with the same principle covered in this site's Pragmatic Play guide: Blueprint doesn't build its own direct player-facing responsible gambling tools - instead, it partners with operators that provide deposit limits, self-exclusion, and reality checks at the account level. As with any software provider, Blueprint's own licensing and certification covers the fairness of its games specifically, not the operator's own responsible gambling implementation or regulatory standing - always verify the specific casino's own licence independently, the same principle this site applies across every operator review.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Jackpot King tier structure?

Three simultaneous tiers: the Royal tier must pay out before reaching $3,500, the Regal tier before reaching $35,000, and the top Jackpot King prize is genuinely unlimited with no forced ceiling - it has recorded wins worth millions, including a documented $5 million-plus payout on King Kong Cash Even Bigger Bananas in January 2024.

Did any Blueprint slots start as physical pub machines?

Yes - several of Blueprint's most enduringly popular titles, including King Kong Cash, Slots O' Gold, and Genie Jackpots, began as physical UK pub fruit machines before the company pivoted to online development in 2008. This heritage gives these specific titles a simpler, more traditional design feel than Blueprint's newer, online-first releases.

Who owns Blueprint Gaming?

Blueprint is owned by Germany's Gauselmann Group (Merkur) - an initial stake was acquired in 2008, with full integration into the Merkur corporate structure completed by 2012. Blueprint's development team and headquarters remain UK-based in Newark.

Is Blueprint Gaming the same company as Merkur?

Not exactly - Blueprint operates as a subsidiary within the wider Gauselmann Group, which also owns Merkur Gaming directly as a sister brand. They share corporate ownership and resources but operate as distinct entities within the same group.

What is Jackpot King?

Blueprint's proprietary progressive jackpot network, linking participating Blueprint slots across multiple operators so the jackpot pool grows from play at every connected casino simultaneously, rather than each game running an isolated, standalone jackpot.

Is Blueprint Gaming's RTP better than other studios?

Not particularly - independent industry analysis describes Blueprint's overall RTP positioning as solid and dependable but not especially generous relative to the wider market. Fishin' Frenzy's own 96.12% RTP, covered in this site's dedicated guide, is representative of this typical range. Blueprint's genuine differentiators are more in its Megaways implementations and licensed franchise content than in unusually high base RTP.

What are Blueprint's most notable slot titles?

Fishin' Frenzy (covered in full in this site's dedicated guide) is Blueprint's most recognisable original franchise, alongside licensed titles including the Deal or No Deal series and The Goonies.

This guide is for educational purposes. All game outcomes are determined by certified random number generators, and no strategy guarantees winning outcomes. Always verify the specific operator's own regulatory licence independently of which software providers it carries. Gambling problem? In the UK: BeGambleAware.org | 0808 8020 133. In the US: 1-800-GAMBLER. Information correct as of September 2026.