Bottom line: Megaways, the reel format you now meet under a dozen different studio logos, was invented by an Australian company - Big Time Gaming, founded in Sydney's Surry Hills - and the smartest thing BTG ever did was license that maths to everyone else. Its games sit in all ten of the casinos we review, and five of them file the format under a dedicated Megaways tab. Below is the studio story, the licensing business behind the badge, the Evolution buyout, and where to play. The full studio roster lives in our pokies providers hub.
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The quiet Australian export
Founded in Surry Hills in 2011
Big Time Gaming set up shop in 2011 in Surry Hills, an inner suburb of Sydney, under founder and chief executive Nik Robinson. Robinson was no first-timer: he had started NT Media back in 1996 and later passed through Openbet before building BTG. The company has stayed put since, which makes it something few players pick from the outside - the format they keep meeting in offshore lobbies was written in New South Wales.
The road Aristocrat did not take
Australia's household pokies name went the other way. Aristocrat keeps its real-money games inside regulated markets and off the offshore shelf entirely, so of the country's two famous studios, BTG is the only one whose work you can actually play for cash at the casinos we review.
The invention took two games
Dragon Born, 2015
Megaways did not arrive with fireworks. Its first carrier was Dragon Born in 2015, a release few players could name today, built on a then-strange idea: reels that change shape from one spin to the next. The game itself faded. The idea inside it was the part that travelled.
Bonanza, December 2016
The engine's moment came on 7 December 2016, when Bonanza landed and did what Dragon Born had not - it made the format famous. Bonanza turned Megaways from an in-house experiment into the mechanic every rival studio wanted a piece of, and nearly a decade on it is still the game most players attach to BTG's name.
Renting out the maths
Who pays for the engine
The clever part came after the hit. Instead of keeping Megaways to itself, BTG offered the engine to competing studios under licence, for a fee. Blueprint Gaming acquired rights in 2018, and the roster has since grown to take in Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, Red Tiger and Relax Gaming, among others. Each licensee designs its own game - theme, art, features - on top of BTG's reel maths, and pays for the foundation.
Why the badge travels under other logos
That arrangement explains something that trips up plenty of players: a Megaways badge on a pokie whose maker is plainly not Big Time Gaming. The badge marks the engine underneath, not the studio on the splash screen. For how that engine actually behaves - the shifting symbol counts, the way totals, the RTP-version trap - see our Megaways pokies page, because we are not going to re-teach it here.
The Evolution chapter
Sold for up to 450 million euros
In April 2021 Evolution, the Swedish group best known for its live dealer studios, agreed to buy Big Time Gaming for up to 450 million euros in cash and shares. The purchase completed in July 2021, and BTG moved into a stable of game studios that also holds NetEnt, Red Tiger and Nolimit City.
What changed for players
Less than the price tag suggests. BTG kept its own brand, kept releasing its own titles and kept licensing the engine across the industry, so the badge has gone on spreading under new studio names since the sale. The ownership is now European. The output still reads like the studio Robinson built in Sydney.
The titles BTG kept for itself
Bonanza and the early trio
Licensing pays the bills, but BTG still ships its own games, and three of them carry most of the reputation. Bonanza, from December 2016, is the flagship and the natural first spin. White Rabbit Megaways followed in 2017. Extra Chilli Megaways arrived in 2018 and closed out the early trio - the games most people mean when they search for Big Time Gaming Megaways pokies.
Where Australians can play BTG
Stocked at all ten casinos we review
Availability is the easy part of this story. Big Time Gaming titles appear at every one of the ten casinos we review, which puts the studio in the same small club as Pragmatic Play: learn the catalogue once and you will find it wherever you sign up. No specialist site is needed to play Bonanza for real money.
Five sites group the format in a tab
Half of our set goes further and runs a dedicated Megaways tab: Crownslots, RollXO, Neon54, CrownPlay and Stonevegas. If the format is the reason you are picking a casino, Crownslots gives the tab the deepest pool to draw from with its 8,000-plus pokies, while Neon54 pairs its tab with a 5,600-plus lobby and an A$5 max bet while a bonus is active - worth knowing before you chase a feature. The other three are covered in our reviews.
The catch is the variance
BTG's history does not change the maths at the bottom of your screen. Megaways games swing hard: long flat stretches broken by outsized hits are the normal rhythm, and a bankroll sized for a gentler pokie drains faster here than you expect. Decide your stake and your stop point before the first spin, not during a dry patch. Our pokies volatility guide covers variance, hit frequency and how to match a game to the money you brought.
Frequently asked questions
Big Time Gaming is the studio that invented the Megaways engine, the variable-reel format now licensed across the industry. Its own best-known titles are Bonanza, White Rabbit Megaways and Extra Chilli Megaways, and since July 2021 it has operated inside the Evolution group while keeping its own name and its own release schedule.
Yes. BTG was founded in 2011 in Surry Hills, Sydney, by Nik Robinson, and the Megaways engine was built there. Evolution, a Swedish group, has owned the studio since July 2021, so the ownership is now European, but the origin, the founding team and the defining invention are Australian.
All ten of the casinos we review stock BTG games. If you want them gathered in one place, five of the ten run a dedicated Megaways tab - Crownslots, RollXO, Neon54, CrownPlay and Stonevegas - which collects BTG's own titles together with licensed Megaways games from other studios.
BTG licenses the engine for a fee, so studios such as Blueprint, Pragmatic Play, NetEnt, Red Tiger and Relax Gaming build their own games on its maths. The badge points to the engine underneath, not the maker. Theme and title belong to the licensee; the reel format belongs to BTG.
Mostly, yes. The format leans toward long quiet runs broken by large hits, so a session bankroll empties faster than on a steadier pokie. Size your stakes for those swings, fix a stop-loss before you spin, and read our volatility guide if you want the mechanics behind the pattern.
Responsible gambling
Megaways maths swings hard, and offshore casinos carry their own risks on top. Set a deposit limit before you play, treat every session as spending rather than earning, and stop when it stops being entertainment. Free, confidential support is available around the clock from Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858. 18+.