Microgaming vs PG Soft: maximum-build RTP and a blank volatility field

Size and format mix

PG Soft has 172 entries on this site, but Baccarat Deluxe is a table game and is left out of this piece's statistics. The remaining 171 slots are compared with Microgaming's 295 slots (plus 58 live tables).

Of PG Soft's 171, 170 come out as standard video slots and 1 as ways. PG Soft's catalogue records reels and features, as in “5 reels · Free Spins Feature”, but almost never the pay mechanic. Mahjong Ways 2 is written that way too, so it lands in standard.

Microgaming has 147 standard, 71 fixed-payline, 54 ways, 16 cluster pays, 4 Link & Merge, 2 Maxways and 1 cascading-reel slot. Both studios have a high standard share, but the more important difference is that the site's classifier cannot really read PG Soft's format mix at all.

Volatility: a grade on one side, a blank on the other

Microgaming publishes volatility grades: 115 High, 74 Medium, 59 Very high, 20 Low, 7 Medium-high, 1 Low-medium and 19 unlisted.

All 171 PG Soft slots on this site show volatility as unlisted, because the field is absent from the studio's catalogue data. PG Soft does, however, sometimes state a “Session Volatility” on individual game pages, and this site has not carried those values over yet. The accurate statement is not that PG Soft publishes no volatility but that it is not on this site yet.

As a result there is nothing to compare on volatility. The site does not fill blanks with estimates, so instead of drawing a PG Soft distribution it leaves the field empty.

RTP: maximum build versus the hub figure

RTP is published for 156 PG Soft and 240 Microgaming slots. The medians are 96.75% and 96.12%. PG Soft ranges from 94.14% (Win Win Won) to 97.44% (Ninja vs Samurai); Microgaming from 91.89% (Froot Loot) to 97.49% (Dragon Dance).

PG Soft's published RTP is the studio's stated maximum. The same game may ship lower builds, and a spec sheet alone cannot tell you which build is in use. Microgaming's value is the number its hub lists for each game.

So PG Soft's median coming out 0.63 points higher should not be read as a difference between the catalogues. One figure is explicitly a maximum build and therefore sits high by construction; the other carries no such label. The comparison is approximate, and part of the gap comes from how the numbers are published.

Win caps, release years, demos and themes

PG Soft publishes caps for 156 slots (91.2%), median 10,000×, with a top of 100,000× on titles including Mahjong Ways 2. Microgaming has caps on only 37 (12.5%), and its median is also 10,000×. The medians match, but one comes from most of a catalogue and the other from a small part of one.

PG Soft's 151 dated slots run from 2017 to 2026, with 29 before 2020 and 53 from 2024 to 2026. Microgaming runs from 2004 to 2026, with 60 before 2020 and 92 from 2024 to 2026. Demos run for 151 of PG Soft's 171 and 265 of Microgaming's 295. PG Soft's top themes are East Asia (34), Wealth (25) and Animals (15), reversing the order of Microgaming, where Wealth comes first.

For examples, PG Soft's Mahjong Ways 2 is 96.95% with a 100,000× cap, its predecessor Mahjong Ways is 96.92% with 25,000×, and Guardians of Ice & Fire is 96.7% with 50,000×. On the Microgaming side there are K-POP Hunter Zeus (95.91%, Very high, 50,000×) and Queen of Cairo (96.59%, Medium, 10,000×).

The difference is shape and publishing, not quality

On this site PG Soft's RTP and caps are dense while its formats and volatility are nearly invisible. Microgaming has volatility grades and few caps. The two catalogues have their blanks in opposite places.

That has nothing to do with which studio is better. What differs is what gets recorded and on what basis, and the point of this piece is to show which numbers should not be set side by side because of it.