VLT easter eggs

Everyone likes easter eggs, hidden features in video games, DVDs, etc. Usually they are not that impressive–you can unlock hidden commentary or an alternate costume in fighting games. But an article in Canada’s National Post says that video lottery terminals also have easter eggs that can be exploited:

As the middle-aged mother from Illinois plunked away at buttons on the electronic poker machine, something unusual happened. The machine, usually so adept at parting gamblers from their money, fell under the spell of the player.

The woman had manipulated the video lottery terminal at an Edmonton casino into letting her win on command, recalls Zues Yaghi, a computer programmer and gaming machine expert who watched the scene.

“She had been doing it for four years and had put her kids through university, was driving a Mercedes 500. She was all decked out,” Mr. Yaghi recalled.

“She thought she was the queen of the underground…. It’s so easy, so easy to run 10 grand from these machines.”

Mr. Yaghi says the woman was tapping into what he and some other experts call an “easter egg”: a line of digital code allegedly embedded on to the machine’s computer chip by rogue programmers, allowing informed players to cheat the games out of their booty.

Mr. Yaghi reported the problem to gaming authorities after discovering it himself. But four years later, rather than being hailed a hero, he is living a legal nightmare over the issue, facing a $10-million libel suit filed by the American maker of the machine on which he first found an easter egg.

Meanwhile, he and other experts allege that some compromised machines are still out there today, raising questions about the fairness of a diversion on which Canadians spend billions of dollars a year.

‘Easter egg’ cheats cracking casinos?

In the old days of mechanical slots, owners had to worry about mechanics or locksmiths making a duplicate key; today, they have to consider the possibility that programmers have inserted easter eggs.
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Yesterday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an opinion piece I wrote about Pennsylvania’s recent slot machine bill’s approval:

Forum: Greetings from Slotsylvania

Obviously, this bill marks a historic milestone, and I think that we’re going to be seeing much more gaming expansion in the next few years.