Big Time Gaming Explained: How Megaways Works and Where Irish Players Can Actually Find It

The studio that built Megaways is the hardest of the nine to find it from

Big Time Gaming invented Megaways, licenses it to a long list of other developers, and still owns the name. None of that shows up in the lobbies this site’s nine partner casinos presented in September 2026. Not one named Big Time Gaming as a supplier, and Bonanza, the game that made the mechanic famous, was not visible in a single one that could be opened from this side. Two partners run a category simply labelled Megaways, and it is packed with other companies’ takes on the format.

That is a specific finding, not a guess. It is also not the same as saying the mechanic is missing. Megaways is arguably more present in Ireland’s casino lobbies than ever, just rarely wearing the badge of the company that invented it.

Who Big Time Gaming actually is

The studio was founded in 2011 by Nik Robinson, according to its own about page, which also credits Huw McIntosh with technical direction and Ian Schmidt with creative leadership. Robinson’s earlier venture, New Tech Media, founded in 1996, was sold to News Corp and merged with Orbis to become Openbet, a detail the company’s own history page volunteers rather than one dug up elsewhere. Big Time Gaming is still headquartered in Surry Hills, New South Wales.

Ownership changed in 2021: Big Time Gaming’s site states that Evolution acquired the studio that year, which is worth knowing because Evolution is better known in Ireland for live dealer tables than for slots. The 2016 release of Bonanza is what the company itself calls the turning point for its reputation, and it is the reason Megaways exists as a licensable product rather than a one-off feature.

What Megaways actually changes at the reels

A standard slot fixes its paylines: 20, 25, sometimes more, but the number never moves. Megaways instead varies how many symbols land on each reel from spin to spin, typically between two and seven per reel across six reels, and the number of ways to win is recalculated every time. Big Time Gaming’s own marketing states the ceiling at 117,649 ways, reached when every reel is fully loaded at once.

Bonanza paired that with a system Big Time Gaming calls DuelReaction, a cascading mechanic where winning symbols clear and new ones drop in from both directions rather than only from above. A single spin can therefore resolve several wins in a row before it settles, each one recalculating the ways to win again. It is this combination, not the ways-count alone, that other studios licensed when they built their own Megaways-branded titles.

Bonanza and Extra Chilli, without the numbers the studio doesn’t give you

Bonanza and Extra Chilli are the two titles Big Time Gaming’s own site foregrounds as its calling cards. Neither game page publishes an RTP figure. That is worth stating plainly rather than filling the gap with a number picked up elsewhere, because a figure attributed to the wrong source is worse than no figure at all.

Extra Chilli adds a Feature Drop, which lets a player trigger the bonus round outside the base game, and a Free Spins Gamble that starts at even odds and can extend a round to as many as 24 free spins. Big Time Gaming’s own description calls it a game that “re-creates much of the same intense action that made Bonanza so incredibly enjoyable” while giving it a separate identity, which is a fair summary of how the sequel actually plays against the original.

What Big Time Gaming is actually promoting now

A visit to Big Time Gaming’s own homepage in September 2026 turns up almost none of the titles that built the studio’s reputation. The featured lineup shown there was Monster Quest, Fruit Merge Megapots, Monopoly Megapots, Millionaire Megapots, Monopoly Rush Hour, Monopoly Tapcards, Monopoly Deluxe, Warlocks, Christmas Megapots, White Rabbit 2, Castle of Terror 2 and Star Clusters 2. Three separate Monopoly-branded entries and a sequel to White Rabbit, rather than a fresh push on Bonanza or Extra Chilli themselves.

That reads less like neglect than like a studio that has moved on to licensed brands and sequels while treating the 2016 and 2017 originals as the back catalogue that still does the explaining for it. The site’s own description of Megaways as a mechanic “licensed to numerous developers and setting a new industry standard” fits that posture: the company sells the idea now more than it sells any one game built on it.

Where the Megaways label shows up in partner lobbies instead

Nomini and Playzilla both run a Megaways category on their own sites, and both are worth a look purely as evidence of how far the mechanic has spread beyond its inventor. Nomini’s list runs to two dozen titles including Madame Destiny Megaways, Elvis Frog TRUEWAYS, Legacy of Kong Maxways and Book Of Realm Jumboways; Playzilla’s runs longer still, with names such as Buffalo Dale: GrandWays and Caishen Deluxe Maxways alongside standard Megaways branding. TRUEWAYS, Maxways, Jumboways and GrandWays are all other studios’ variants on the same licensed idea, packaged under their own trademark rather than Big Time Gaming’s.

Neither list contains Bonanza, Extra Chilli, or any other Big Time Gaming original, which is the detail that matters here. A player who opens the Nomini review or the Playzilla review expecting the studio behind Megaways will find the mechanic everywhere and the studio nowhere.

What the nine partners actually showed, checked in September 2026

The JackpotCity line is worth a second look rather than a shrug. Its provider list names Games Global, and Big Time Gaming’s own site states Games Global’s related company Evolution as its owner; Games Global itself is a large umbrella platform that has absorbed several studios over the years. Whether Bonanza specifically sits inside JackpotCity’s Games Global catalogue could not be confirmed from the page opened, and the JackpotCity review does not claim otherwise, so this stays an open question rather than a tick in either column.

Why the studio’s absence matters more on high-volatility titles

A digression worth having here, because it changes how a Megaways game should be budgeted rather than just where to find one. Bonanza carries a stated volatility that Big Time Gaming itself does not quantify beyond the ways-count, and licensed variants of the mechanic can run their own volatility settings independently of the original. Two games sharing the Megaways name are not guaranteed to behave the same at the reels, which is a reason to treat the mechanic as a category rather than a single product when setting a session budget, not a reason to avoid it.

Ireland’s Gambling Regulation Act 2024 adds a forward-looking wrinkle. Once online casino applications open, expected in 2027, a €10 maximum stake and a €3,000 maximum win will apply to certain casino-style games under a GRAI licence. High-multiplier Megaways titles are precisely the games such a cap would reshape, since a chunk of their appeal is the rare spin that pays far beyond the ways-count alone. The Ireland gambling licence page tracks how that phase-in is progressing.

Where that leaves a player looking for Megaways specifically

If the mechanic itself is what you want, Playzilla’s category is the deepest of the two confirmed lists, and Nomini’s is close behind; both are reachable from this site’s reviews rather than from anywhere claiming to be Big Time Gaming’s own storefront. If it is Bonanza or Extra Chilli by name that you’re after, none of the nine partners checked here can currently deliver that, and it would be dishonest to point you at one and hope.

The how we rate page explains why a provider check like this one gets logged with a date rather than left as a permanent claim: lobbies change their supplier lists more often than review copy gets updated, and a licensed developer landing a new deal could move any of these rows within weeks of this check running.