October 2021, the UK Gambling Commission banned bonus buy slots. The rule cited RTS requirement 14A: gambling products must not encourage players to increase their stake or chase losses. A bonus buy at 100x your bet does exactly that. A player betting £1 per spin could suddenly wager £100 in a single click.
The UKGC expected the industry to follow. Other regulators did not.
Five years later, bonus buy is not just legal everywhere else. It is the default. Hacksaw Gaming includes bonus buy on 100% of its slots and hit €137M revenue in 2024. Nolimit City builds entire games around tiered bonus purchases. The providers that kept the feature are now the fastest-growing studios in the market.
The UK ended up alone on this.
What Bonus Buy Actually Is
Big Time Gaming invented the feature in 2017 with White Rabbit. Pay 100x your stake, skip the base game, go straight to free spins. The mechanic solves a real problem. High-volatility slots can run hundreds of spins without triggering a bonus round. Players want the big wins. They do not want to grind through a base game waiting for three scatters to land.
Bonus buy removes the wait. Pay the price, play the feature. The cost scales with the slot. Standard bonus buys run 50x to 100x the base bet. Nolimit City charges up to 2000x on games like San Quentin. Hacksaw Gaming slots typically sit between 80x and 400x.
The math stays the same. Buying the bonus does not guarantee a profit. The RTP on a purchased feature matches the RTP on a triggered one. You pay to skip the wait, not to win more.
Streamers use bonus buy because waiting for a feature makes bad content. Players who hate the base game skip it. High rollers want faster action.
The Providers Who Picked Bonus Buy Over UK Compliance
Hacksaw Gaming launched in 2018 and built its entire catalog around the feature. Every slot includes bonus buy. No exceptions. The studio hit €137 million in revenue in 2024 with an 84% profit margin. Wanted Dead or a Wild, their flagship title, lets players buy three different bonus rounds at 80x, 200x, or 400x the stake.
Nolimit City pushes the mechanic further. Their slots offer tiered bonus buys with different feature levels. Tombstone R.I.P. includes options from 68x up to 750x. The studio built its reputation on extreme volatility, and bonus buy fits that identity.
Pragmatic Play, Push Gaming, and ELK Studios all release bonus buy slots regularly. The feature is now standard for any provider targeting the high-volatility market. These studios create UK-compliant versions as an afterthought, not a priority.
How the UK Works Around It
The ban did not kill the games. Providers just started releasing two versions.
Providers release UK-compliant builds with the bonus buy button removed. The same slot runs with full features on MGA-licensed casinos in Malta and everywhere else. Players outside the UK see the button. Players inside the UK do not.
Some studios designed workarounds. Relax Gaming launched the Money Cart series, which removes the base game entirely. Money Cart 2 starts in the bonus round every spin. No button to ban because there is no base game to skip. The slot runs a higher RTP to compensate, and the bonus triggers on average every 10 spins.
Blueprint Gaming followed with “All Action” versions of popular Megaways titles. Same concept: bonus-only gameplay without a feature buy button.
These games are legal in the UK because they meet the technical standard. They just happen to deliver what bonus buy players want through different mechanics.
What It Means for Players
If you play at a UK-licensed casino, you will not see bonus buy options. The feature is blocked regardless of which provider made the slot.
If you play with crypto or any platform operating under MGA, Curacao, Gibraltar, or most other online casinos, bonus buy is available. The same Hacksaw or Nolimit City slot that runs without the button in the UK runs with full features everywhere else.
Bonus buy costs real money. A 100x purchase on a £1 bet is £100 for one bonus round. That round might pay 20x or 500x. The variance is the point.
If you want big swings without grinding through base game spins, bonus buy slots get you there faster. If you prefer slower play, the UK model forces that pace.
Five years is long enough to see what happened. The UKGC thought the industry would follow. Instead, providers built their business around the feature and made more money than ever. The ban only applies in one market. The rest moved on.
