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UK fruit machines they are not the same as US game as they pay out to a target % and do cheat you on high / low and other bonus games.

http://www.fairplay-campaign.co.uk/fruit/

the UK fruit machines are fixed.
http://www.fairplay-campaign.co.uk/fruit/index.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaIesHOIQJs

I don't know what the law in the States is like, but in the UK, these people make out a good case for slot machines being rigged. In brief, they use an emulator which will run fruit machine code, allowing you to play until you get a gamble, lose, go back to the saved machine state before the gamble, choose the alternative option and... lose again!

UK Slot Machines are not quite the same as American ones, and the laws are somewhat different, but you're certinaly right that they play with punters' emotions and give pre-determinded payoffs. See here for detailed examples and evidence.

Not terribly surprising, but still disappointing. It will be interesting to see how gambling evolves, as casinos take ever more stringent steps to avoid giving out more money to someone than they paid in. Here's an interesting little exhibit from the UK dealing with the rigging of fruit machines.

Okay, in a lottery, if you pick the numbers right, you win. In a coin toss, if you choose right, you win. That doesn't mean you win or lose based on the choices you make. It means you win or lose based on the balls that come up or the fall of a coin. Whether you chose 'head' or 'tail', your chances of winning are equal. The numbers you pick in a lottery are the same. By chosing them you're simply seeding the win-lose generator.

Now, although the authors of the site imply that there are situations where you can't win, I don't believe that's what is actually going on, and that was the point I tried to make in my original post. Although the outcome "you lose" comes up over and over again if you save or reset the state of the machine and perform the exact same procedure over and over again, that doesn't mean the game is fixed. It means that, if you could go back in time and do it over again, the coin would fall the same way. This is the nature of RNGs. Although I don't want to get mixed up in a debate over temporal mechanics and chaos theory, (actually I do, but whenever I bring it up at the pub I suddenly find myself alone at the table, so I won't try), I'm tempted to think that, if you could watch a coin toss occur, without in any way influencing that coin toss (Heisenberg be damned, let's assume we have compensators), and you would then rewind time and watch it again, the coin toss would come out the same way.

Maybe not, but what I'm trying to say is that, even though you knew what was going to happen the second time, nobody, not even the computer, knew what was going to happen the first time. Unpredictability may not be the same as randomness, there is no true randomness within the context of a computer program. If we assume a random number generator to be random, randomness has been served. If not, electronic gambling isn't gambling.

By your reasoning electronic gambling isn't. That's fine; a completely valid view. But, even from that perspective, there will be situations where a user is offered a choice and cannot win, but there will also be situations where a user is offered a choice where he cannot lose. No fruit machine has a "you lose" button you can press, and if it did, people wouldn't press it. There are people who spend a LOT of time behind these machines. If a machine worked that way, they'd know. Even if the button wasn't marked "you lose". Let's assume for the moment the button is marked "fluffy, happy rabbits". If it never pays to press the button, a gambler won't. There's always the casual player, I suppose, who thinks fluffy, happy rabbits are a good idea. He may press the button once or twice. Point is, as long as it's not predictable, it's gambling.

Conversely, it's not gambling once it becomes predictable. And what these people have apparently set out to prove is that, in certain situations, they can predict whether you'll win or lose. Assuming the machine (or the emulator, it remains to be seen whether this works on actual machines) is cold booted, the same sequence of interactions will lead to the same results over and over again. So, since they now know that they'll either win or lose as the result of a specific action, they protest? They know when they're going to win, don't they? They know that, if the machine is in a certain state, and they do this, that, and the other, they'll walk home 25 quid richer*. I'm sorry, but had I worked this out and been able to profit from it, I damn well would have kept my mouth shut and started planning my life of leisure. The fact that this is being published is either proof that there is no way to determine when and if you're going to win or lose outside of the context given or proof that the publishers of the site are too well-meaning to recognize the chicken with the golden eggs.

*At this point, you'll have gambled the win up to £25. However, the machine doesn't want you to gamble any further. This is where a wise person presses the 'payout button' ;)

The example they have is that, if you follow the sequence on this page, the machine reaches a point that's supposed to be a gamble, but in fact you cannot win. And it's not because the output is predetermined, or the seed is the same and it happens to be a losing bet. It's a high/low gamble, so you should have a chance to win regardless of what the seed was. But if you pick high the machine picks low, and vice-versa. An 'honest' machine would pick the same number regardless of which button you picked.

Of course, the legal/ethical issue is more complicated than the simple mechanical issue. The basic problem is that machines are never fair, and cannot ever be fair because their purpose is to redistribute money from your pocket to the machine owner. The large number of people who seem to think that gambling is ever fair are deluded or naive. And the problem with the specific machine referenced above is that it has the extremely difficult task of mapping a percentage payout (they mention it's probably 70%) to a more fair operation (high-low with a pair of dice). Therefore, it has to cheat sometimes to ensure it doesn't payout too much. Which is perfectly legal, and really is the only way to do it. If they actually get a law passed saying that machines cannot cheat in any circumstance, it will mean the end of gambling, because no owner in their right mind would take a real gamble, where they could lose all that money they've been raking in.

With this RAM file, the machine is about to spin in a jackpot. If you attempt to gamble the jackpot for the "streak", you will lose. (The number reel will show a 10. If you gamble "Low" it'll spin a 12, if you gamble "High" it'll spin a 9.) Again, this is clearly NOT a gamble, since you have no chance of winning, hence it is fraudulent and illegal.

Also, note that casinos are based on statistics, not on regulating individual payouts. While on the whole the casino will always win due to the massive scale it operates on, there is the opportunity for individual players to beat the odds and leave with more money than they came in with. Not allowing the player to win, with no element of chance whatsoever, is illegal almost everywhere. I imagine that this would fall under fraud laws at the very least, due to the fact that these machines are advertised as gambling devices based on random events.

they did that, look at the evidence

I can't seem to find -where- they got the ROM from? Seems like a crucial part of it to say what particular model/version.. I mean, even the screenshots have different quality graphics.

Not to say they're lying, but I'm not convinced of their "proof". Anyone else see something I missed?

I take it the reason behind trying to find production costs are to attempt to campaign for cheaper music CD's (could really use this in the UK, considering most are released in the £15 range). However it is usually hard to factor risk into the retail cost.

In a similar veign there was a campaign by fairplay in the UK to try to get cheaper video games factoring in production costs to arrive at a fair price for games. Coming to the conclusion that cheaper games related to increased sales.

I sort of feel that charging slightly higher prices allow more risky/niche acts or games to be released, allowing both the mass market to prosper and the more off-beat market to exist. Rather than the business taking the risk of few sales for less money