Honestly, these kind of lawsuits are ridiculous. People need to sue General Mills for false advertising instead because sugary cereals causing diabetes; or any other big-food company brainwashing children on YouTube kids.
The machine will not allow a win no matter what until a set number of losses has happened. The default shipped setting is to not allow a win until there has been 700 losses. Some other vendor in Arizona is noted as having been sued because he ran his games at a required 2200 losses to allow a payout.
Actual gambling devices are much more regulated and have much better payout odds most likely (depending on what's winnable), but more importantly are actually random.
These games are not chance, and they aren't skill, they're a scam that market themselves as a game of skill.
A college friend works for my state's gaming commission. During a 'drinking talk' about digital signatures, she told me an interesting part of her job; not just going through the slot machines and validating the payout settings, but also checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes.
* - This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays.
> checking the EEProms MD5 Hash* to make sure that it was in a list of 'approved' code hashes.
> This was 15 years ago, I -really- hope they use something better nowadays.
I dunno. If the hash is generated and displayed by the hardware on a separate LCD display (or a serial you attach) and maybe a bit of non-flashable code, that seems pretty good to me, especially that it's regularly spot checked in person. Something like that is far harder to fake and fool real people with successfully for an extended period, IMO.
Yeah, same can be said about "brainwashing kids on YouTube" (whatever that's supposed to mean anyway) or "false advertising" of cereals ... what is your point?
It is like poker, which is a combination of skill and luck.
Yes it is.
> It is one reason why some places, like California, have poker rooms.
No, that's because some instances of gambling involving betting against other players are sometimes selectively regulated differently than betting against the house. Its the same reason some places, like, again, California, that prohibit casino gambling allow parimutuel betting on horse races.
I was only saying that there is skill involved. Gaming laws never classify gambling games as those that require zero skill. Otherwise, poker, blackjack, even craps wouldn't be gambling, because all bets do not have the same odds, and therefore skilled players do better than unskilled.
The other may never pay out even if you are 100% accurate.
This is a big difference.
It takes a degree of skill and coordination to pull the lever on the slot machine, yet we don't call them a game of skill because of that.
If you're 100% accurate and you still lose, it's a game of chance.
Let's say the game only allows 1/100 tries to have the chance to win. Player A has the skill to win 50% of the time, player B 25%.
Player A will end up winning 1/200 times, while player B will win 1/400.
Skill matters.