Paying Minutes in Online Slot Games: Experts and industry warn of fraud and illusory profit
In order to increase their own earnings, affiliated people are breaking the rules and cheating players to receive commissions from bets. To address this problem and hold those who commit fraud accountable, the industry advocates for the implementation of regulations.
Fortune Tiger slot game, known as the little tiger game - Photo Reproduction/Matheus Moreira
The exponential growth of online slot games has raised several concerns among experts and regulators. Recently, A new term is gaining prominence in the field: "paying minutes". This concept refers to the time a player spends in a game with the expectation of making a profit, but in practice it can be misleading. Experts warn that this practice could be a new form of fraud, creating an illusion of profit among players. According to experts and representatives of the betting sector, the strategy known as paying minutes, popular on social networks and WhatsApp, is considered a fraud.
What Are Paying Minutes?
Paying minutes are periods in which the player receives small rewards or frequent wins, which encourage continued play. These rewards may give the impression that the player is making a profit, but, in fact, the amount won is often much less than the total bet. Promoters of this strategy claim that paying minutes are times when online slot games tend to pay out the most prizes. For example, if the paying minute is 9, the game could pay more at times that end at 9, such as 12:59 pm or 3:19 pm.
This phenomenon is particularly problematic in online slot games, where the frequency and value of prizes are controlled by complex algorithms. A frequent strategy is to claim the existence of a bug in the game, where by carrying out a certain sequence of actions during a specific period, it would be possible to obtain financial profit.
How do games work?
The images that are displayed in the online slot, such as fruits, bells, bags of coins and tigers, are just visual illustrations of the numbers generated randomly by an RNG (Random Number Generator, in Portuguese). According to Leonardo Benites, communications director at the National Gaming and Lottery Association (ANJL), which represents online gaming platforms, there is nothing a customer can do before or during a round of a slot game that could influence the result.
The Illusion of Profit
The illusion of profit is a psychological tactic used by game developers to keep players engaged. By offering small regular wins, Players are led to believe they are getting closer to a big prize, which rarely happens. According to Ana Paula Gatti, director of the Brazilian Association of Bingos, Casinos and Similars (Abrabincs), the promise of paying minutes and secret strategies in the gaming universe is ineffective and unfounded.
This mechanism, combined with the ease of access to online games, can lead to the development of compulsive behaviors and significant financial losses. The director of Abrabincs states that if it is proven that these paying minutes do not exist and if the games are certified as random, influencers are scamming their followers to make profits by selling fake strategies and with the commission of bettors' losses, who may be being harmed doubly.
According to Ana Paula, if the strategy eventually works, it means there is fraud on the platform. This is because slot machines are games of chance, and, in principle, the results must be random, without any defined pattern, and unpredictable, just as happens in lotteries.
Alert Specialists
Experts in consumer behavior and gambling psychology have raised red flags about the dangers of paying minutes. According to the analysis of psychologists specializing in human behavior, paying minutes establishes a vicious cycle in which the player receives constant rewards, but insignificantly. This fact can result in problematic gambling behavior, in which the player is unaware of the significant amount he is losing.
Consumer protection organizations are demanding more transparency from online gaming companies. They argue that players should be clearly informed about the actual winning probabilities and how algorithms determine rewards. According to experts and industry representatives, affiliates of betting platforms often promise paying minutes irregularly.
These affiliates receive commission based on the volume of bets they manage to attract to the platform. This promise is widely publicized on websites. In the last 30 days, the term "paying minutes" had the most mentions on WhatsApp than Minister Fernando Haddad and a volume similar to that of Bolsa Família, according to data from Palver, which monitors 70,000 public groups on the messaging app. Luis Fakhouri, director of Palver, states that the constant number of daily mentions of the term "paying minutes" suggests that there is automated sending.
The Gaming Sector and Self-Regulation
ANJL states that affiliates who are caught disseminating false strategies to obtain winnings in games should be expelled from the association. Leonardo Benites, the association's communications director, stated that the problem falls on the operator (betting house), because when the customer discovers that they have been deceived and have been scammed, the only contact they have is with the operator. In this sense, the operator claims to have no knowledge of what happened.
The online gaming industry is starting to respond to these concerns. Some companies are implementing self-regulatory measures, such as disclosing return-to-player (RTP) rates and creating tools to help players monitor their time and spending in games. However, critics argue that these measures are still insufficient. According to consumer law experts, self-regulation is a positive step forward, but it needs to be accompanied by stricter government regulation in order to protect vulnerable players.
Magnho José, president of the Brazilian Legal Game Institute (IJL), argues that it is necessary to establish more precise standards in relation to online games. He states that regulation is essential to address the conduct of influencers, as platforms will be responsible for the content they are recommending to followers.
Law of 2023 authorized online slot games
Online slot games were legalized in Brazil by law 14,790/2023, which also regulated the operation of bets, sports betting platforms. The law only allows these random result games to be offered over the internet, not allowing the installation of physical machines to carry them out. Furthermore, the dissemination of misleading information about the chances of winning is prohibited.
