How Hacksaw Gaming built a reputation for some of the highest-variance, highest-max-win slots on the UK market in under a decade, the mechanics that define its house style, why its headline RTP figures don't always match what's actually live at a given operator, and the games — from Wanted Dead or a Wild's 12,500x ceiling to the sprawling Le and 'Em series — that established its name

Hacksaw Gaming has become one of the most talked-about slot studios in the UK market despite being considerably younger than long-established names like Microgaming or NetEnt, built on a deliberately narrower, higher-volatility identity than most mainstream providers pursue. This guide covers the studio's history, its signature mechanics, the specific games that have defined its reputation, how its RTP actually works once an operator configures it, its distribution partnerships, and the real cost structure behind the Bonus Buy feature its catalogue leans on so heavily.

Who Hacksaw Gaming Is

Hacksaw Gaming was founded in 2018 by Marcus Cordes, starting out with instant-win scratchcard products before expanding into online slots, and opened Malta-based offices in 2019 as it scaled up. The studio now operates across more than 35 markets, with over 250 titles hosted by more than 3,000 gaming platforms — a considerably faster growth trajectory than most competing studios have managed in a comparable timeframe, built specifically on a "quality over quantity" release strategy rather than a large, undifferentiated catalogue.

The studio has picked up recognition along the way reflecting that focused approach, including the MGA's Instant Win of the Year in 2019, SiGMA's Best Game of the Year for Chaos Crew 2 in 2023, and SBC Europe's Medium Studio of the Year in 2025.

The House Style: "Risk Over Cost"

What genuinely distinguishes Hacksaw from most mainstream slot studios is a deliberately narrower creative identity, built around a specific set of recognisable traits rather than a broad, varied catalogue chasing every popular theme.

High volatility is close to the studio's default setting, not an occasional variant. Where studios like Pragmatic Play or Big Time Gaming release games spanning low, medium, and high volatility across a wide range of themes, Hacksaw's catalogue skews consistently toward the high-volatility end, built around the idea the studio itself describes as "risk over cost" — letting players consciously balance how much they're willing to risk against how volatile a specific title's swings can get.

A distinctive visual identity runs through the catalogue — darker aesthetics, urban art influences, neon colour palettes, and a recognisable grid-based reel design that's become closely associated with the studio's output specifically, rather than following the more traditional slot-symbol conventions used across much of the wider market.

Bonus Buy features are common across the catalogue, letting players pay directly to skip the base game and enter a title's premium bonus round immediately — a mechanic that isn't unique to Hacksaw, but is used consistently enough across its catalogue to be a recognisable part of the studio's overall approach.

Consistent RTP positioning around the 96% mark runs across most of the catalogue's headline figures, with individual titles varying modestly around that figure rather than swinging widely from one release to the next — though, as covered below, the headline figure and the RTP actually live on a given UK operator's site aren't always the same number.

RTP in Practice: Why the Headline Figure Isn't the Whole Story

Hacksaw Gaming, like most slot studios that have released games since around 2021, builds most of its titles with multiple selectable RTP configurations rather than a single fixed figure. Wanted Dead or a Wild, for example, is published with four available RTP settings — 96.38%, 94.55%, 92.33%, and 88.42% — and it's the individual operator, not Hacksaw, who chooses which of those settings goes live on their own site. The same multi-tier structure applies across much of the wider catalogue: Hand of Anubis is configurable across 96.24%, 94.32%, 92.28%, and 88.41%, and Bloodthirst across 96.19%, 94.23%, 92.32%, and 88.36%, according to third-party RTP-tracking sites that log which setting individual operators actually run.

This matters in practice because the 96%-ish figure typically quoted in marketing and reviews is usually the top available setting, not necessarily the one live on the specific site you're playing on. Reporting on UK operator configurations suggests a meaningful share of casinos run Hacksaw titles at the second-tier setting (around 94%) rather than the maximum, and some run lower still. This isn't unique to Hacksaw — it's a standard industry mechanism that lets operators tune their own margin per title — but it's a genuinely practical thing to know given how central a specific RTP figure is to comparing Hacksaw's catalogue against other studios: checking a specific game's actual live RTP via its in-game information screen, rather than relying on a headline figure quoted elsewhere, is the only way to know which configuration you're actually playing.

The Game Series That Define the Catalogue

Rather than releasing unrelated standalone titles, Hacksaw has built much of its identity around evolving game series, where later entries refine and build on an established mechanic rather than starting from scratch each time.

The "'Em" series, featuring a recurring character called Canny the Can, includes Drop 'Em, Keep 'Em, and Stack 'Em — each entry building on stacked multipliers, sticky reels, and retriggering bonus mechanics that evolve from one release to the next within the series.

The "Le" series, featuring a recurring character called Smokey the Raccoon, is Hacksaw's largest and longest-running series, built around a shared frame mechanic involving coin collection and a multi-tier multiplier structure, with each themed entry applying the same underlying system to a different setting. It began with Le Bandit (a Wild West-themed cluster-pays release with a reported 10,000x max win) and has since grown to include Le Pharaoh, Le Viking, and Le Cowboy, among further entries continuing to apply the series' core mechanic to new themes. Each later entry has generally pushed the advertised max-win ceiling higher than the last — reported figures for individual Le-series titles have run as high as the low five figures multiplied by stake, consistent with the escalating maximum-win trend across the studio's wider catalogue.

This series-based approach is itself a differentiator worth knowing — a player who enjoys one entry in the Le series, for example, is likely to find the mechanical experience of another entry in the same series familiar, even with a completely different visual theme.

Signature Individual Titles

Wanted Dead or a Wild (RTP up to 96.38%, operator-configurable down to 88.42%) — probably the studio's best-known individual release, built on a 5x5 grid with three distinct bonus modes and a maximum win potential reported at up to 12,500x stake, among the higher advertised ceilings in the current UK slots market.

Chaos Crew (RTP 96.3%) — a 5x5 grid title built around the studio's signature urban visual identity, notable for a deliberately jarring audio shift from classical to techno as gameplay intensifies, and the winner of SiGMA's Best Game of the Year for its sequel in 2023.

The Bowery Boys (RTP 96.41%) — features multiplier strongboxes and "bomb" multiplier mechanics across three separate bonus rounds, a good example of the studio's tendency to stack several distinct bonus systems within one title rather than relying on a single feature.

RIP City (RTP 96.22%) — a comparatively medium-volatility release within the catalogue, built around expanding wilds, worth knowing about specifically if you're interested in the studio's visual style without committing to its usual high-volatility intensity.

Hand of Anubis and Bloodthirst — two further titles in the catalogue with their own multi-tier RTP configurations (up to 96.24% and 96.19% respectively), both reinforcing the operator-configurable RTP pattern that runs across the studio's output as a whole rather than being isolated to its single best-known release.

RTP and Volatility: What to Expect Across the Catalogue

Hacksaw's catalogue consistently sits around the 96% RTP mark across most titles at their top configuration, broadly in line with typical UK slot RTP expectations, but volatility is where the studio's identity is most distinct — the large majority of its output is built at the high or very high end of the volatility spectrum, meaning longer stretches without a significant win, offset by the potential for considerably larger payouts when a bonus round lands well. Titles like RIP City, positioned at medium volatility, are the exception within the catalogue rather than representative of the studio's typical release.

The advertised maximum win multipliers across Hacksaw's catalogue run high even by high-volatility slot standards — Wanted Dead or a Wild's reported 12,500x ceiling is a useful reference point for the kind of extreme, low-probability maximum outcome the studio's titles are commonly built around, and several later Le-series releases have been reported at even higher ceilings still, a trend that's become something of a competitive signature for the studio as its catalogue has grown. Even so, the large majority of individual bonus rounds land nowhere near these advertised maximums.

Bonus Buy: What It Actually Costs

Bonus Buy is one of the most consistently used mechanics across Hacksaw's catalogue, and it's worth understanding its cost structure in more general terms before treating it as a shortcut rather than a distinct way of playing.

Across the wider slots market, Bonus Buy features typically cost somewhere between roughly 50x and 200x the base stake to trigger a title's premium bonus round immediately, rather than reaching it through ordinary base-game play — the exact multiplier varies by game and by which specific bonus tier is being purchased. Independent analysis of thousands of individual bonus buys across multiple studios' games has found that players recover, on average, somewhere in the region of 90% of what they spend triggering the feature — with that average return running noticeably lower on high-volatility titles specifically (historically closer to the high-80s percentage range) than on lower-variance games. The same analysis found that only around a quarter of individual bonus buys returned a profit at or above the purchase cost, with a substantial share returning well under half of what was spent, and genuinely large multiplier outcomes (20x the buy-in cost or more) landing in only a small single-digit percentage of purchases.

This is directly relevant to a studio built around high volatility specifically — because Hacksaw's bonus rounds are drawn from a catalogue skewed toward the high-variance end, the underlying maths of Bonus Buy on its titles is likely to sit toward the less favourable end of that broader range rather than the more forgiving low-volatility end. None of this makes Bonus Buy an inherently bad way to engage with a title — it's a legitimate, deliberate way to skip straight to a game's most eventful mechanic — but it should be understood as its own distinct gamble with its own cost, not simply a faster route to the same expected outcome as playing the base game through to a bonus round naturally.

Distribution and Industry Partnerships

Hacksaw Gaming's fast growth has been driven substantially by aggregator and platform partnerships that widen its distribution well beyond direct operator integrations. Relax Gaming's content-distribution partnership with Hacksaw is one of the studio's longest-standing routes to market, making its catalogue available to the wide range of operators already plugged into Relax's platform rather than requiring each casino to integrate Hacksaw directly. More recently, Uplatform announced a partnership in October 2024 bringing Hacksaw's catalogue — reported at more than 150 titles across slots, scratchcards, and instant-win games at the time of the deal — into Uplatform's own casino aggregator, further widening the pool of operators able to offer Hacksaw's output without a bespoke integration. GrooveGaming has also added Hacksaw to its own aggregation platform. This aggregator-driven distribution model is a meaningful part of how a studio founded as recently as 2018 reached more than 3,000 platforms across 35-plus markets in under a decade — a scale of distribution that would be considerably harder to achieve through direct one-to-one operator deals alone.

Where to Play Hacksaw Gaming Slots

Hacksaw Gaming titles are supplied to a wide range of UK-licensed casino operators as a B2B slot provider, both directly and via aggregator platforms like Relax Gaming and Uplatform, similar in structure to how Pragmatic Play and other studios license their catalogues across the market (see this site's existing Pragmatic Play provider hub for a comparable studio profile). Given the studio's relatively recent, fast-growing footprint, checking whether a specific operator carries Hacksaw's catalogue specifically — and which RTP configuration they've chosen to run — is worth doing if you're after one of its titles by name, rather than assuming universal availability or a single fixed RTP the way you might with a longer-established studio's back catalogue.

A Practical Checklist Before Playing

Expect high volatility as close to the default across this studio's catalogue, not an occasional variant — budget and session-length expectations should be set accordingly.

Check a specific title's live RTP via its own information screen rather than relying on a headline figure, since most Hacksaw titles ship with multiple operator-selectable RTP tiers, and the one running on your specific casino may not be the top figure quoted elsewhere.

Understand Bonus Buy as a distinct, higher-stake way to play with its own, generally unfavourable average return, not the same risk profile as playing the base game through to a bonus round naturally — treat it as its own deliberate choice rather than a default way to engage with a title.

If you're drawn to one entry in the Le or 'Em series, the other entries in the same series are a reasonable next title to try, given the shared underlying mechanics across each series' entries.

Who Hacksaw Gaming Slots Genuinely Suit

Good fit: players who specifically enjoy high-volatility slots with large, dramatic bonus-round payouts and distinctive, stylised visual design — the studio's entire identity is built around that specific combination.

Less suited: players looking for steadier, lower-volatility gameplay, or a broader range of visual themes and moods than the studio's consistently urban, high-intensity aesthetic covers — a more general-purpose studio catalogue is likely to offer more variety on that front.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Hacksaw Gaming founded, and where is it based?

2018, founded by Marcus Cordes, starting with instant-win scratchcards before expanding into slots. The studio opened Malta-based offices in 2019 and now operates across more than 35 markets, distributed both directly and through aggregator partners like Relax Gaming and Uplatform.

What makes Hacksaw Gaming's slots different from more mainstream studios?

A deliberately narrower identity built around consistently high volatility, a distinctive dark, urban visual style, and a "risk over cost" approach — rather than the broad range of themes and volatility levels a studio like Pragmatic Play or Big Time Gaming typically spans.

What is Hacksaw Gaming's best-known slot?

Wanted Dead or a Wild is generally considered the studio's flagship release — a 5x5 grid title with three bonus modes and a maximum win potential reported at up to 12,500x stake.

Is Hacksaw Gaming's RTP typically higher or lower than average?

Broadly in line with typical UK slot expectations at its top configuration — most titles are published with a headline figure around the 96% mark. But most Hacksaw games ship with several operator-selectable RTP tiers below that figure too, so the RTP actually live on a specific casino site can run noticeably lower than the headline number — always check the individual game's information screen for the current, live figure.

What is Bonus Buy, and is it available on Hacksaw's games?

Bonus Buy lets players pay directly to skip a slot's base game and enter its premium bonus round immediately, typically costing somewhere between roughly 50x and 200x the base stake depending on the game. It's used consistently across much of Hacksaw's catalogue, but independent analysis across the wider bonus-buy market suggests players recover only around 90% of what they spend on average — running lower still on high-volatility titles specifically — so it's worth treating as its own distinct gamble rather than a shortcut to equivalent value.

Are all Hacksaw Gaming slots high volatility?

The large majority are, and high volatility is close to the studio's defining trait, but there are exceptions — RIP City, for example, is positioned at medium volatility within the catalogue, so it's worth checking a specific title rather than assuming every release is equally high-variance.

This guide is for informational purposes. RTP, volatility, and maximum win figures are as reported by third-party slot review sources and may vary 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 September 2026.