Barcrest Slots: Rainbow Riches, Big Bet & the Fruit Machine Dynasty

By Jack Henshaw, Head Writer · Published 22 August 2026 · Corporate and licence records checked at source

Barcrest built the British fruit machine and gave the country Rainbow Riches. It is also, as a company, dissolved — wound up in February 2022, with no game credited to the name since 2018. This review covers what the brand is now, what happened to the Big Bet format, and the large gap between the returns these games advertise and the returns British casinos actually serve.

Barcrest at a glance

Corporate data from Companies House; licence data from the Gambling Commission public register. Both checked 24 August 2026.

Is Barcrest still a company? No.

Barcrest Limited was incorporated on 27 August 1968, and for the next four decades it did more than any other business to define what a British fruit machine was. If you played a slot in a pub or an arcade in Britain between 1970 and 2010, you played Barcrest.

That company no longer exists. It was renamed SG Gaming Limited in November 2012 and formally dissolved on 15 February 2022. What survives is the name.

Today Barcrest is a heritage brand controlled by Light & Wonder, and the evidence that it is no longer a studio is unambiguous. Barcrest is not one of the studios listed in Light & Wonder’s own iGaming catalogue — searching it returns nothing, and the studio filter has no entry for it. Every Rainbow Riches game page in that catalogue, including titles from 2017 and the most recent 2026 release, names the studio as Light & Wonder. There has been no Barcrest press release since June 2018, and the January 2025 launch of a major new Rainbow Riches game does not mention the name once.

Rainbow Riches, and how big the family got

Rainbow Riches launched in arcades in 2006 and became the most recognisable British slot brand of the modern era. Its structure was three bonus features — Road to Riches, Wishing Well and Pots of Gold — each capped, on the original, at 500 times total stake.

We are not going to tell you when it launched online, because we could not establish it. Four different years circulate across otherwise reasonable sources, none of them citing anything, and the manufacturer has never stated it. That is a small thing, but it is characteristic of how thinly documented this famous brand actually is.

What is documented is how far the family was extended. Light & Wonder’s catalogue carries more than thirty Rainbow Riches records.

From Light & Wonder’s own iGaming catalogue, which publishes every configuration it supplies. Where a single figure appears the catalogue lists only one build. Volatility is not published by the manufacturer for any title in this family, so every volatility rating circulating online is somebody’s estimate.

Two things stand out reading down that list. The first is the trajectory of the RTP column: single high figures in the Big Bet years, then pairs, then ladders of four and five, reaching down to 87 and 88 per cent by 2025. The second is that a separate production line exists. Several Rainbow Riches titles live at British casinos — Rising Wins and Jackpot O’ Luck among them — that do not appear in Light & Wonder’s catalogue at all, and appear to be built by a different studio under licence.

One title to disregard. “Rainbow Riches Fields of Fortune” does not appear to exist. It is not in the manufacturer’s catalogue, not at any operator we checked, and has no press release. The real title with a similar name is Rainbow Riches Fortune Favours.

Big Bet, and what actually killed it

Big Bet was Barcrest’s signature mechanic and the thing most players remember. One commitment bought a fixed bundle of five linked spins at a large flat stake, with progressively better features at each price tier. On Drops of Gold the tiers ran £20, £30 and £50: the first added a Super Rainbow and a double-height symbol, the second stripped out the low-paying symbols, and the third raised the game to 100 paylines, doubling to 200 in free spins.

Its fingerprint is still visible in the catalogue table above. Every Big Bet-era title carries a maximum bet of £400 or £500 and a single unusually high published RTP — 97.75 per cent on Drops of Gold, Home Sweet Home and Fortune Favours, 98 per cent on Reels of Gold and Pick ‘n’ Mix. Those figures describe the bundle, not an ordinary spin.

The common explanation for its disappearance is wrong. Big Bet is usually said to have been killed by the Gambling Commission’s October 2021 rules, which required players to commit to each game cycle individually and banned turbo and slam-stop. It was not. A five-spin Big Bet is a single game cycle under the regulator’s own definition, so those rules did not prohibit it, and British operators were still describing Big Bet as a live feature into 2024.

What ended it was a stake cap. Regulations made in 2025 limit the total an individual may stake in relation to any game cycle to £5 for players aged 25 and over, from 9 April 2025, and £2 for players aged 18 to 24, from 21 May 2025. The same game-cycle definition applies. A Big Bet with a £20 minimum is four times the adult cap.

The manufacturer’s own catalogue records the consequence in a single line. The 2025 rebuild of Rainbow Riches Pick ‘n’ Mix publishes a maximum bet of “5.00 (UK), 500 (ROW)”. The same game, with the same name and the same artwork, takes £500 a spin in the rest of the world and £5 in Britain.

Two honest caveats. No regulator or manufacturer document says “Big Bet is banned” — the conclusion follows from the cap plus those UK-specific maximum bet fields, and we state it as such. And stale Big Bet marketing copy is still live on several British operator pages, describing tiers that cannot lawfully be offered. Do not read those as evidence the feature still works.

What you are actually served

This is the most important section on the page, and it applies to the whole family.

The manufacturer publishes RTP ladders, not single numbers: 96, 94, 92, 90, 87 on the 2025 rebuild of the original. The operator picks one. Every headline figure you read about a Rainbow Riches game — including the 98 per cent that gets quoted approvingly — describes one configuration among several.

Checking a British licensed operator’s live game client, the figures being served were 92.02 per cent on Rainbow Riches, 92.01 on Pick ‘n’ Mix, 92.01 on Even More Pots of Gold, 91.95 and 92.06 on the Road to Even More Riches pair, and 89.13 on Cash Cluster.

Not one of those is the top build. Most sit two rungs down the ladder, and Cash Cluster is being served at the bottom of its published range. Against an industry where two thirds of studios that publish anything put their top build between 96 and 96.9 per cent, a British player on Rainbow Riches is routinely playing a game returning around 92.

None of this breaks any rule. The operator is entitled to license the build it wants, and at a UKGC-licensed casino the figure is in the game’s rules screen where you can read it. But it does mean that on this family in particular, the number in any article — including the catalogue figures in our own table above — tells you almost nothing about the game you are about to open.

The licence position

Barcrest games reach British players under Global Draw Limited, Gambling Commission account 2875, now registered in Manchester. Its licences are active and date from 1 January 2009, and they are Gaming Machine Technical Full in both non-remote and remote form.

Note what that is and is not. Global Draw’s current record is a gaming machine technical licence, not a general gambling software licence — consistent with the group’s British machine business. Online supply within the wider group runs through other licensed entities, including LNW Gaming UK Limited, which took a British remote gambling software licence in March 2025 and a Game Host (Casino) licence in 2026.

How it compares

Positions as at August 2026.

Safer play

A studio’s reputation, its licences and its published returns tell you whether a game is built properly. None of them tells you a session will go well. Over any period you will actually play, variance dominates the return figure completely.

Decide what an evening is worth before you open anything, and set a deposit limit at your casino rather than relying on judgement in the moment. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, BeGambleAware offers free, confidential support, and GAMSTOP blocks you from every UKGC-licensed site at once.

Our verdict

All Slot Providers score: 5/10.

Barcrest’s historic importance is hard to overstate. It built the British fruit machine, and Rainbow Riches remains the most recognisable slot brand in the country nearly twenty years after it launched. The Big Bet format was a genuine invention, and the fact that a stake cap rather than a design rule ended it says something about how far it pushed.

But a review has to describe what a player meets now, and what a player meets now is a brand rather than a studio. The company was dissolved in 2022. No game has been credited to Barcrest since 2018. There is no website. The games carrying the name are made by a different studio inside an American group.

The score is held down hardest by the gap between what is advertised and what is served. A family whose catalogue tops out at 98 per cent is being run at British casinos in the low nineties, and at 89 per cent on one title. That is lawful, disclosed in the rules screen, and completely invisible in every article written about these games — including, until you reach the chart above, most of the ones that quote the good number.

Play Rainbow Riches for what it is: a piece of British gambling history with a familiar bonus round. Read the rules screen first, and expect a number starting with 92.

Barcrest: FAQs

Does Barcrest still exist?

Not as a company. Barcrest Limited, incorporated in 1968, was renamed SG Gaming Limited in 2012 and dissolved in February 2022. The name survives as a heritage brand controlled by Light & Wonder, which has not credited a new game to Barcrest since 2018.

Who makes Rainbow Riches now?

Light & Wonder. Every Rainbow Riches page in the manufacturer’s own catalogue names Light & Wonder as the studio. A separate production line of Rainbow Riches titles appears to be built by another studio under licence, including Rising Wins and Jackpot O’ Luck.

What was Barcrest’s Big Bet feature?

A bundle of five linked spins bought for a fixed high stake, typically £20, £30 or £50, with better features at each tier and a much higher advertised RTP. On Drops of Gold the £50 tier raised the game to 100 paylines, doubling to 200 in free spins.

Why can’t I find Big Bet any more?

Because of a stake cap, not a design rule. Regulations in 2025 limited stakes to £5 per game cycle for players aged 25 and over, and £2 for those aged 18 to 24. A five-spin Big Bet is one game cycle, and a £20 minimum is four times the cap. The manufacturer’s 2025 rebuilds list a UK maximum bet of £5 against £500 elsewhere.

Are Barcrest slots high RTP?

The catalogue figures are, reaching 96 to 98 per cent. What British operators actually run is not. Checked live, Rainbow Riches was returning 92.02 per cent, Pick ‘n’ Mix 92.01, and Cash Cluster 89.13. The manufacturer publishes ladders and the operator chooses a rung.

Does Scientific Games own Barcrest?

No, and that has been wrong since April 2022. The Scientific Games name went with the lottery business; the remaining group is Light & Wonder, and that is who controls the Barcrest name.

Is there a Rainbow Riches Fields of Fortune?

We could find no evidence it exists — it is not in the manufacturer’s catalogue, not at any operator we checked, and has no announcement. The real title with a similar name is Rainbow Riches Fortune Favours.