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If you’re anything like most slot lovers, you’re probably spinning the reels of your favorite games for the thrill of it. Each spin is a joy on its own, especially when those scatters line up perfectly to grant passage into the bonus round.
Still, each dead spin takes away from the fun, especially if you fail to trigger the bonus in 100, 200, or even more spins. That’s where bonus buy features come into play. For a price often around 100x your stake, the feature buy-in option lets you enter the bonus round instantly.
While the upfront cost can seem worth it when a bonus round is one click away, one bad buy can wipe out the equivalent of dozens of regular spins. You have to be extra careful when playing bonus buy slots, otherwise you risk overspending and watching your bankroll slowly disappear.
This guide will shed some light on the ins and outs of bonus buy slots, how they work, and what makes them so popular in today’s online casino industry.
Bonus Buy Features 101
Before we dive deep into the factors that made bonus buy features so popular, you’ll need to understand the basics behind them. In simple terms, a bonus buy feature is an option some providers offer on their slots that allows players to access bonus rounds immediately.
In other words, bonus buy options allow you to skip the bonus hunt with potentially hundreds of dead spins and get right into the feature round. In most cases, you’d have to pay a fixed price to enter the bonus, mainly in the 50x–100x range.
Bonus buys don’t necessarily guarantee big wins. You have to tread carefully with these; otherwise, you might risk losing large sums of money on consecutive buys.
The Roots of Bonus Buys
Feature buy-in didn’t just come out of nowhere as a slots option. Providers like Big Time Gaming and Pragmatic Play gradually integrated them into their games, starting small with features like the ante bet.
For a small price, players got to significantly increase their chances of landing a bonus. After all, the peak gameplay of modern slots isn’t in the base game features, but rather in free spins bonus rounds.
Games like Bonanza helped popularize high-volatility, bonus-focused slot design, while ante-bet and feature-buy mechanics later gave players more direct ways to chase those rounds. Pragmatic Play then helped popularize the modern bonus buy format across many mainstream online slots. Major providers like Nolimit City, Hacksaw Gaming, and Push Gaming followed right up, making it the industry standard that it is today.
Slot Streamers Pushing Bonus Buys Into the Spotlight
The rise of bonus buy features in online slots is closely tied to the success of slot streamers. Major streamers like TrainwrecksTV, Xposed, and Roshtein introduced these options to millions of viewers looking for their daily dose of bonus action.
Suddenly, the narrative completely shifted from playing slots in anticipation and hunting for the bonus as the entire goal of the game to simply skipping the base gameplay altogether. Attention spans on social media are rather short, so slots lovers didn’t want to spend too much time focusing on the “boring” part of the game.
Instead, they demanded more similar content, and other streamers followed the example. Providers quickly picked up on this pattern, investing more into diversifying and improving feature buy-in options, which led to all the fancy choices we have today.
Main Benefits of Feature Buy-In Options
As if instantly getting into the bonus wasn’t enough on its own, bonus buys also come with a fair share of other benefits. Here’s an overview of the biggest ones for players:
- Control over the game flow: Online slots work on the Random Number Generator (RNG) technology, which randomly generates the outcome of each spin. While that’s something that players have no control over, choosing the exact moment of triggering the bonus is a whole other story.
- Less time spent on bonus hunts: Hunting for the bonus via the base gameplay often takes hours, and there’s no guarantee that you’d save money by chasing after the bonus, rather than simply buying your way into it.
- Clearer cost per feature: A bonus buy shows the cost upfront, making budgeting easier for disciplined players.
Major Providers Focused on Bonus Buys
Given the popularity of bonus buy slots, it’s no wonder that some providers have completely tailored their production efforts based on such options. Naturally, some are more invested than the others, so here’s a snapshot of the main differences of the feature buy-in options by provider:
Pragmatic Play
Pragmatic Play stands out as one of the main innovators in this category. It’s more difficult to find their slot without a bonus buy option than it is to find feature buy-in titles.
They even invented the Pragmatic Replay feature, letting you watch the recordings of your biggest bonus buy hits and relive the winnings. Some of their most popular bonus buy slots include:
- Sweet Bonanza
- Gates of Olympus
- Sugar Rush
- Gems Bonanza
- Book of Fallen
Hacksaw
While Pragmatic helped make bonus buys mainstream, Hacksaw pushed the format further with highly volatile games, multiple buy options, and higher advertised max wins.
They quickly started rolling out extremely volatile games with multiple bonus buy options, so that players could choose their preferred format.
Games like 2 Wild 2 Die and Wanted Dead or a Wild pushed 15,000x and 12,500x maximum wins, respectively. Other high-paying bonus buy slots from this provider include Le Pharaoh, Hand of Anubis, and Xmas Drop.
Push Gaming
Push Gaming somewhat blended the approaches of Pragmatic Play and Hacksaw by making visually appealing games with high payout potential. Games like Retro Tapes and Giga Jar, in particular, stand out for colorful symbols and visually engaging gameplay, with maximum payouts of 10,000x.
The provider has also revisited older concepts through sequels and spin-offs, such as Razor Returns and Razor Ways, where feature-buy-style options play a much bigger role.
Nolimit City
Nolimit City is another provider strongly associated with extreme volatility, complex bonus structures, and unusually high advertised max-win figures.
The Mental slot packs an outstanding max win of 66,666x your bet size, and that’s just one in a line of many games that follow the same concept.
The True Cost of Bonus Buys
There’s no fixed cost to bonus buys when playing online slots. They’re relative to your stake, and the purchase of the feature round usually knocks the sum worth 100x your bet off your bankroll. Then, there’s bonus buy diversification.
Many providers now offer several bonus buy options, each costing different amounts. Take the Razor Ways slot, for example. In this Razor Shark sequel, players have multiple feature buy-in options, depending on their gameplay goals.
You could pay a sum worth 67x your stake to randomly turn one of the regular paying symbols into wilds, or pay 50x for the Razor Reveal feature. Then, there are several free spins buy-in options priced differently by feature.
For instance, a bonus starting with a 1x multiplier would set you back 73x your bet, while a bonus with a 10x multiplier costs 466x. Always double-check the bonus buy amounts and only purchase bonuses with sums you’re comfortable spending.
Potential Setbacks and Downsides
For many slot lovers, bonus buys are among the most convenient features providers have introduced. In reality, not everything is as great as it sounds, so here’s an overview of the main drawbacks:
- Bankroll management risks: Bonus buy options make feature rounds easily accessible, and who doesn’t enjoy going through a few bonuses? As much as that shortcut is a good thing, it requires careful bankroll management.
- Regulatory compliance: Due to spending risks, some regulators, such as the UK Gambling Commission, have taken action against feature buy-in mechanics. They believe that the ability to stake significant sums to access bonus features raises concerns regarding social responsibility.
- High variance: Though some of the games we’ve mentioned have extremely high payout potential, the reality is that you never know what to expect. It’s entirely possible for a slot to give you 5 empty bonus buys in a row, just as much as it can make you a winner in just one bonus.
FAQ
Are bonus buys better than natural triggers?
Depending on how you look at things, bonus buys might be better than regular bonuses in terms of the triggering convenience. Still, they mainly retain the same bonus mechanics, so all you do in most cases is skip potentially dead base gameplay.
Can you win more by buying the bonus?
Not usually. A bonus buy normally gives you faster access to a feature, but does not automatically increase the slot’s maximum win. Some games have different buy options or feature versions, so always check the paytable.
Are bonus buys available on mobile?
Usually, yes, especially when it comes to games from mobile-first providers like Pragmatic Play. That said, availability varies by casino, game version, and local rules.
Do all slots have the bonus buy option?
No, not all slots come with the bonus buy option. Look for a feature buy-in button next to the grid for a simple availability indicator.
