Class action lawsuit against Sega over rigged game
Key Master is a merchandiser arcade game developed by Sega. It's basically the same general principle as a "claw crane" machine, and the game can be found in many of the same kinds of places you find claw machines, but the gameplay is mechanically different. The prizes are also much, much different from what you'd normally find in a claw machine; these games' top-tier prizes can be things like iPads, Nintendo Switches, or GoPro cameras.
Key Master is played like this: Instead of a claw, you're aiming a large plastic "key" which is attached to the end of a mechanical arm. This arm moves horizontally and vertically in front of a few rows of clearly-visible prizes of tiered value, not too dissimilar from glass-fronted vending machines (but with far fewer and far more expensive items). Each prize has a big square frame hanging in front of it, that is just large enough for the key-shaped plate to fit through it. When you begin a round, you have a certain time limit within which you can move the key-arm left and right horizontally as much as you want; when the time limit is up (or whenever you are satisfied with the horizontal alignment) you press a button to make the arm rise vertically and release the button to stop. Unlike with the horizontal movement, you only have one opportunity at this vertical alignment. Once you release the button, the key-arm stops rising and starts to extend forward toward the square frames. If the key is aligned well enough to pass through one of the frames, you win the prize behind that frame. If the alignment is even negligibly off and the key-plate touches the frame, the round is lost and the machine resets.
Here's the problem: these games are rigged. In the case of Key Master, one of these machines
will not allow any top-tier prizes to be won unless (by default) at least 700 losing rounds have been played since the last win. Otherwise, if you release the vertical-move button at exactly the right moment to perfectly line up with any frame, the arm will continue moving upwards for the slightest fraction of a second, just far enough that the key when it extends will strike the frame and lose. The default payout rate can be changed by the operator too - in fact, it can be set per row, so the different tiers of items can have different rates.
This isn't exactly scandalous, of course. Those claw machines with the toys and stuffed animals? They're rigged too. If you've ever played one and you just know that you managed to grab a stuffed bunny perfectly but it seemed like the machine just would not grip the stupid thing firmly enough to pick it up, your eyes weren't deceiving you - that machine hadn't reached the payout turn yet and its claw was programmed to not be able to hold the weight of any of the prizes in the machine, no matter how perfect your aim. And yes - as long as certain circumstances are met, this kind of rigging is 100% legal.
The thing is, one of those "circumstances" that has to be filled for the rigged machine to be legal is that it can't be advertised or marketed as a game of skill (SL oldbies will be having flashbacks after reading that sentence) - and this is where Sega seems to have screwed up, because the cabinet decoration on its Key Master games straightforwardly suggests that all you need is good aim to win, and there is nothing to inform players that the game is literally impossible to win - that the machine will actually secretly and unbeatably "ruin" the player's aim, in every single attempt, no matter how skillful - except during certain pre-programmed times that a player has no way of determining.
You can read a copy of the lawsuit itself
here.
www.pcgamer.com
