Big Time Gaming: The Legendary Studio That Invented Megaways

You have played a Megaways slot. Everyone has. That little “up to 117,649 ways to win” tag you see plastered across half the games in any casino? One small Australian studio invented that, and it is called Big Time Gaming. Then it did something clever. It let almost everyone else use the idea too, for a fee.

So while dozens of rival studios were busy releasing their own Megaways slots, Big Time Gaming quietly collected a cut of the whole thing. It is the most copied studio in the business, and being copied is exactly how it got rich. Not a bad trick if you can pull it off.

The company itself is small, a little secretive, and obsessed with quality over quantity. It does not flood the market. It drops a handful of games a year, most of them excellent, and it changed how online slots work more than almost any studio alive. That is what a genuine industry titan looks like.

Provider type: Game Studio. Big Time Gaming, or BTG for short, builds its own slots and licenses its famous mechanics to other studios. No live tables, no aggregation of other people’s libraries, just games and the engines that power them. On our Provider Types filter it lands under Game Studio.

Who is Big Time Gaming

A small Australian studio since 2011

Big Time Gaming was founded in 2011 in Sydney, Australia, led by Nik Robinson alongside engineer Huw McIntosh and artist Ian Schmidt. Robinson was not new to the game. He had built and sold a gaming tech company years earlier, so BTG launched with real pedigree rather than starting from scratch. For a Sydney outfit far from the traditional European gambling hubs, it punched astonishingly far above its weight.

Quality over quantity, on purpose

Here is what sets BTG apart from the slot factories. It makes very few games. The studio has released somewhere north of 70 core titles in its whole existence, which a giant like Pragmatic Play might match in a single busy year. The difference is that BTG polishes each release until it gleams, then usually gives it a soundtrack good enough to hum on the way to work. Fewer games, far more care.

Megaways, the mechanic that ate the industry

What Megaways actually is

Time for the five-year-old version. A normal slot has a fixed grid, say three symbols on each of five reels. Megaways tore that up. On a Megaways game, each of the six reels shows a random number of symbols every spin, anywhere from two to seven. Because the layout keeps changing, the number of ways to win explodes, all the way up to a frankly ridiculous 117,649 on a single spin. No two spins look quite the same, and that constant variety is a big part of the buzz.

Bonanza, the game that made it famous

Megaways needed a hit to announce itself, and in 2016 it got one. Bonanza is a goldmine-themed slot with a mine-cart reel rattling across the top, cascading symbols that explode and refill, and a climbing multiplier in the bonus round. It looked and sounded like nothing else at the time. Streamers adored it, players chased it, and Bonanza quickly became one of the most recognisable slots ever made. The engine had its poster child.

The licensing empire

This is the masterstroke. Rather than keep Megaways to itself, BTG rented it out. Studio after studio lined up to license the engine, and by 2022 the industry had pumped out more than 200 different Megaways slots. You will find Megaways versions of games from Pragmatic Play and Play’n GO, and even a Megaways edition of NetEnt‘s Gonzo’s Quest, all running on BTG’s invention. Megaways got so big that back in 2019 Ladbrokes built an entire casino tab just for it. Every one of those games quietly reminded players who started it all.

Beyond Megaways

Megaclusters and the rest of the toolbox

One world-changing mechanic would be enough for most studios. BTG kept inventing. Star Clusters Megaclusters introduced Megaclusters, a grid game where winning symbols split into four smaller ones and multiply the chaos. Other releases experimented with fixed-grid “Quads” formats. The studio treats slot maths like a playground, and it keeps building new rides.

Megapays, the jackpot chapter

In 2021 BTG moved into progressive jackpots with Megapays, a four-tier prize system, Mini, Midi, Major and Mega, that can drop on any spin and grows across a shared network of games. Bonanza Megapays bolts that jackpot onto the classic goldmine slot, which is a very BTG thing to do. The Megapays network is even shared with Relax Gaming, so two big studios feed the same growing pot.

The games that made BTG a legend

Beyond Bonanza, the back catalogue reads like a greatest-hits album. Extra Chilli took the Bonanza formula somewhere spicier. Danger High Voltage arrived in 2017 and became an instant classic, partly thanks to a soundtrack that anyone who touches slots will recognise. White Rabbit dressed Megaways up in an Alice in Wonderland coat, Lil Devil brought the noise, and Millionaire Megaways turned a famous quiz show into a slot. A neat bonus detail: many BTG games run with no maximum win cap at all, so on paper there is no ceiling on a lucky bonus round.

The Evolution connection

Every big slot story lately seems to end at the same address, and BTG is no exception. Evolution, the giant that dominates live casino, acquired Big Time Gaming in 2021, folding it in beside NetEnt and Red Tiger and pushing its games out through Evolution’s global distribution network.

Fans of Megaways can relax about one thing. The licensing programme survived the takeover, so rival studios outside the Evolution family can still pay to use the engine rather than being locked out. Evolution bought the golden goose without strangling it, which is good news for the hundreds of Megaways games players already love.

What Big Time Gaming is like to play, and where

High risk, high reward, no ceiling

BTG builds for players who like a bit of danger. Most of its slots run high to very high volatility, which is plain-speak for long quiet spells punctuated by the occasional enormous hit. Combine that with the frequent lack of a win cap and you get games designed around the dream of one absolutely massive spin. Thrilling on a good day, brutal on a bad one.

Mobile-first and built to perform

Technically, BTG has always been fussy. Its games are built in HTML5 from a single codebase that runs identically on phone, tablet and desktop, and the studio has long obsessed over fast loading and smooth play. Newer titles add cinematic soundtracks and sharper visuals on top, so a modern BTG slot feels genuinely premium rather than thrown together.

How to spot Big Time Gaming in a lobby

Spotting a real BTG game is easy once you know the tells. Most casinos let you filter the lobby by provider, and Big Time Gaming is usually listed. Even without the filter, the Megaways tag and that “up to 117,649 ways to win” line are dead giveaways, though remember plenty of those games are licensees rather than BTG originals.

For the genuine article, look for the classics: Bonanza, Extra Chilli, White Rabbit, Danger High Voltage and Lil Devil are all BTG through and through. One handy rule of thumb is that if a Megaways slot has an unusually good soundtrack and a slightly reckless streak, there is a fair chance this is the studio behind it. Worth a quick check too, the same Megaways game can ship with different return-to-player versions at different casinos, so glance at the RTP before settling in for a long session.

Bonus buys, big wins and getting paid

Many BTG games include a feature buy, letting you pay upfront to leap straight into the bonus instead of grinding for it. Fast, fun, and a fast way to spend, so treat it with respect. You will find these games at a huge range of licensed sites, including plenty of crypto casinos, often paired with casino bonuses and free spins. Since an uncapped BTG slot could in theory pay something enormous, it is worth checking a casino’s payment methods and withdrawal limits before you commit, because a monster win needs a cashier that can keep up.

A quick, honest word on risk

No dressing this up. High volatility means the losing runs are long and completely normal, and those headline max wins are astronomically unlikely by design. Set a budget you are comfortable losing, treat the top prize as a fantasy, and BTG stays a genuine thrill rather than an expensive habit.

Big Time Gaming in 2026

The studio is far from resting on its Megaways laurels. Bonanza Falls arrived in 2024 with a new “Megadozer” coin-drop twist on the original, and 2025 brought Max Megaways 2, a slick title dangling a colossal 147,625x win potential. Madame Mystique and other recent releases keep the quality bar high, and the trophy cabinet grew with back-to-back EGR innovation awards in 2023 and 2024.

Being part of Evolution has given BTG something it never had as a scrappy independent: enormous reach. Its games now appear at more casinos than ever, distributed through Evolution’s platform, while the studio keeps doing the one thing it has always done best, inventing mechanics everyone else wishes they had thought of first.

The bottom line

Big Time Gaming is proof that you do not need to be the biggest studio to be the most important one. It invented Megaways, the single most influential slot mechanic of the past decade, then made a fortune watching everyone else use it. Its own games, led by the legendary Bonanza, remain some of the sharpest and most rewarding around. Whether you play a BTG original or one of the hundreds of Megaways slots it inspired, you are playing in a world this small Australian studio built. You will find its games across most of our top-rated casinos and plenty of other online casinos too.

Want the rest of the giants? Head back to our casino software providers hub, or see the studios that license Megaways in our Pragmatic Play, Play’n GO, and Relax Gaming breakdowns.