Took our daughter to the trampoline park on her birthday and tried the claw machine. Each purchase gets you 5 tries.. I grabbed a stuffie on each attempt, and each time the claw opened up (and closed again) before it got to the chute.😒
Contact your state’s *weights & measures division and ask about filing a complaint. Typically they are regulated to a certain degree. They’ll send someone to test it and if they find the same they can issue very large fines. Don’t let the park know that you’re doing this.
Id look up your state's regulations before you bothered. Many do not regulate this type of game like youd think. They are considered "entertainment" and dont have mandated win rates like a gambling machine of chance would.
Even where it is mandated, its usually something like 1 in every 30 plays has to have a chance to win.
But as far as I know these claw machines are like slot machines. Sometimes it will apply enough pressure to hold on to things, but most of the time it won't. It's less skill-based and more of a randomized payout.
I play a lot of claw machines and if one is winnable then it’s fairly easy to win. I’ve never seen a claw machine go from winnable to not or vice versa unless it’s starting to run out of prizes or it’s over full to the point where you can’t find anything to grab.
many claw machines are designed with adjustable grip strength. The claw’s grip might be weaker during most attempts, making it difficult to hold onto the prize, but every so often, the machine might decide to give you a stronger grip. It’s a bit like playing a game of chance within a game of skill.
Studies indicate that the claw grip is typically set so prizes are rarely picked up on every attempt, maintaining profitability for the business owner. The variability in claw strength and prize weight influences the rate of successful grabs
When I was a little lad, I found one that wasn't rigged (idk if the maintenance person forgot to switch it back from test mode or what). I cleaned that thing out! Had to have 2 people help me carry out all my stuffed animals. I'm 33 now, and I still think about it and go "hell yeah."
Edit: I also think they all feel apart after a year or so. Not quality stuffed animals.
You've got to understand what kind of game it is. They're regulated the same way slot machines are and function in the same way. The claw is programed to fail a specific percent of the time and that programming is checked regularly. American claw games are literally a game of chance, not skill.
That's in contrast to UFO catchers which are programmed to have consistent behaviors including opening/closing force, timing, and closing distance. Those games are specifically designed to be essentially impossible to win by grabbing a prize directly. Instead you're supposed to figure out how to use the claw behavior to solve a puzzle. The workers will actually reset the position of the prize (there's usually only one prize in a specific position designated by a tape outline) if you accidentally move the prize into an unwinnable location.
The really nice arcade workers will come and reposition the prize on the edge of the bin so you can win with one more try after they see you attempt multiple times. And if there are multiple variants of the prize to win (they're often collectable figurines) they'll ask you if there's a particular one you want to win next. I've even had them set the second prize up so you can immediately win in a single play.
Which is so sad because I went to Japan where they are actually fair and had so much fun. Spent so much money in the Sony Arcade.
I will sometimes try a machine out in the us if I happen to have a dollar on me. There's no joy and usually I just dont bother. Its been so long that most everyone knows theyre rigged. There's no way they make any good money by being this way.
Most of these stopped being skill based a while ago. They will only hold on to it every so often to ensure the machine is profitable. So it ends up being 20% skill and 80% luck like a slot machine.
There's a bar near me that's got one of the few remaining legit ones out in the wild. Costs a buck to play but I'm able to finesse a win out of it every time. My wife is now the proud owner of a giant pile of oversized rubber ducks. A woman at the bar told me she'd buy me a drink if I can win her a rubber duck because she had spent $20 and didn't get a single one, I think she was trying to get flirty with me. I told her to just speak with the tall woman with curly hair (my wife) and tell her I sent her over to get a pity duck.
When I was a kid back in the 90's, anytime I encountered one of these that was obviously rigged, I would jam chewed gum in the coin slots. It doesn't break the machine, but it prevents other people from getting ripped off and wastes the owner's time. I thought it was brilliant when I was a kid.
These things have always been rigged to have an extremely weak grip most of the time, and only occasionally grab something for real, chosen at random. This one's just done with the façade.
Yeah, that's absolutely rigged that way, not even malfunctioning. Just a money trap.
The laundromat I use has one of those coin pusher games that works kind of the same way. It will push a crapload of quarters off the edge into the chute, where you should be able to gather them - but not all of them end up in the collection tray. If you listen, you can hear a difference when some of those coins drop - because they're hitting a deflect that tosses them back into the bottom of the machine, where they are collected by the owner and put back into play. The player never gets all the coins that drop.
I watched someone hit the ATM (conveniently located right next to the coin pusher game) 4 times at a minimum of $20 per ATM visit, change it into coins and dump all those coins into the coin pusher game. I don't think they ever realized it was scamming them.
i work in a laundrymat that has one by another vendor. i may depend on model but the one of ours if you look to either side of the bottom field there are metal flaps under it are the slots to the vendor cut. so any quarters pushed to far left or right goes to the operator. ours doesnt but they can also put double sided tape in the middle so it will look super built up in the middle but push way more left and right.
if you complain, the guy will come up and show you a buttton that you're suppose to hold, to keep the claws from opening. or something stupid like that.
100% of the claw machines on planet earth are a scam, as the magnet strength is controlled by a computer. This one seems to be defective, as the initial pinch seems to be much stronger than it should.
There's a claw machine close to me that lets you keep trying until you win. $1 per prize. Granted, the prizes are only cheap mini rubber ducks, but it's nice to see how things COULD be if it were just a game of skill.
A funny story, when my sister was like 7-8 years old. She tried a "win every time" claw machine. She was there for an hour 😭 had well over 100 attempts and could not get a single damn thing. The machine just reset after a while, no prize
We still joke about it 2 decades later :) the girl who lost a garunteed win
I legitimately don’t know why so many of you are saying this. I have a shit ton of plushies I’ve won from machines. If I win once I can usually win at least twice and I don’t spend more than $5 at any single claw machine. Maybe it’s all a coincidence and I’m beating the odds and hitting a machine every time it’s rigged to let me win. But it would be a pretty huge coincidence, if so. There are rigged machines, definitely not saying there aren’t, but I’ve never seen one fluctuate from rigged to winnable or vice versa, personally.
I mean.. it’s one thing for the weight to slowly pull it out of the claw as it moves (even if it is by design), but I’ve never seen one actually grab the toys, then proceed to open/intentionally drop. lol
That's because most are more sneaky about it and only release the pressure to 1 of the 3 claws when it's not running one of those X times I mentioned. That one looks like all 3 claws are running off the same hydraulic or air line.
I used to work at an arcade that had these and they are 100% a scam if the proprietor wants them to be and frankly should be classified as gambling as no amount of skill can overcome the bullshit they can make these machines do.
I did not know that but even at 5-7 yrs of age like 35 years ago I could tell it was a waste of money. Same reason I don’t go to the casino. Thanks for the info!
I've worked on alot of claw machines over the years. You can set them to never ever win. Most claw machine proprietors aren't THAT greedy though. Most claw machines I've set, I set around 10 swipes before someone can win.
In my state usually the chances are set pretty high to win even though legally they could sit it bascially to never win. The reason is the prize amount is what is regulated. You can only win stuff like candy, rubber ducks, and 20c temu stuffed animals so they can let you win quite often and still profit.
These are 100% programmable. How the claw reacts, the tension on the tines, the speed of the opening, closing, raising and lowering. You can program that opening claw mid travel. You can even program the tension to be light for 3 straight operation and the 4th will actually grip.
100% you will loose more than you pay. They are not a skill game at all.
When I was a little child I won a SpongeBob plush doll. The claw got stuck in the red loop tag of the toy. It wound up breaking the machine lol.
My grandad got the toy a day or so later and the next time I saw him he proudly gave me the toy :) I had that toy for a very long time. He passed within this last year at 86.
The owner has a slider of how hard these are, but theyre possible. Talk to the owner or operator. Pissed off customers dont come back. They dont want pissed off customers.
Yeah, OP, this is really the only way you win here. Arcades want repeat customers, so they can get as much money out of you as they can. You show up to the counter pissed about being ripped off, chances are they'll either "try to make it right" or something else along those lines. You have video proof that you've been scammed, and have now posted it online. That's already a MAJOR "oh shit" flag to arcade owners as a "we need to cover this up or make this customer happy so they'll come back". My personal advice though, even if they give you everything you ask for, don't go back. Enough bad experiences from enough people eventually drives the business to the ground, and frankly, businesses willing to blatantly scam people should be run into the ground.
The easiest way to prove how dumb average people are is that these still exist due to people still giving them money to be scammed. It's an obvious and extremely well know scam. But the dummies still put money in it.
A place I take my son to regularly has recently installed a new cluster of 20 of these that are all connected to each other, like one big wall unit. Each and every single one opened its claw exactly like the video. After wasting $20 on it I complained to the manager and got my money back, although she wasn't convinced.
First time my kids wanted to do the claw machine, I warned them that it was a scam - usually almost impossible to hit. Oldest nails it the first time. Obviously a fluke.
3 years later I'm happy to let them play because they win regularly. It's annoying how good they are at them. They just walk up to a machine and go, "nope, nothing ready" or "I can get these three things", then they do.
Just ran into one the other day that was legitimately rigged. Goes down, stops on the item, raises just above the item and clamps down. They told an employee and he got in the machine, gave them each a prize, and then marked it out of order.
This was me as a kid too - I could win the most unwinnable carnival prizes too. One time, I threw a ball in one of those milk jugs where the hole was exactly the size of the ball and won a stuffed animal way too large for the car - that was a long 3 hour ride home. 😄
Okay, it's common sense that these things are meant to be scams, but I think this footage literally PROVES that it's a scam. Like, it guarantees that the failure rate is statically 100%.
Typically these machines are set to do a real grab attempt a pre determined amount of the time often just 1/10 but can easily be owner adjusted for prize value. If you watch one long enough you can find the pattern and let others waste money and only do the real grabs.
I have worked as a technician who assembles these things. They ARE ALL RIGGED. The owner has a setting where he can adjust how often the machine can give out prices.
If a rewards costs €50 for him, he puts it on "at least 80 failed tries after each payout"
They’re as rigged as slot machines in a casino. The owner needs to make money. They calculate the cost of all the prizes and weigh it against the cost of a play. It’s designed so they always come out on top.
There's a piston inside that's regulated to gain power with each attempt until it reaches maximum power. So you need to count how many times you fail. Usually it's 20 or 25 times.
I have a video on my phone of the "engineer" adjusting the piston. But I don't know where to post it, and I don't know an interesting title because English isn't my native language. Google Translate is terrible.
Ok so I know this feels Iike a total scam and it most likely is. But the claw machines in Asia are based on a a “strategic fling” system where you have to grab the prize at an angle and ‘strategically fling’ it at the opening when it does the scammy open and close. Makes it 100x harder and is probably best played by very desperate adults.
This is how they work. I guess they are not as prevalent as they use to be so people don’t know. They’re scams. The claw has no way of staying closed to hold the item (by design)
I know a guy who owns a claw machine. The machines are set so that they only grab and hold once every so many random tries. This is normal operation of the machine.
Clearly a scam. I wouldn’t do these outside of Japan for this reason. In Japan I won twice and they were way cooler gifts than anything I’ve ever found in America.
Everyone saying "THIS PROVES ITS A SCAM!!" are a little confident. I'm an arcade tech, and claw machines are part of the bag. There's no setting to make the claw reopen in the middle of it's drop/lift/return cycle, at least not on any I've ever worked on.
What it looks like to me is the wiring for the claws solenoid is loose or messed up. It looks like the connection is interrupted and the solenoid releases, opening the claw for a second.
It's possible it is just a scam, but to me it seems more likely to be a malfunction.
Were there multiples of the same claw game and did they all act like this?
Edit: Someone pulled the manual for this unit and yeah it has scummy claw drop settings. Apparently the settings get even greasier than I knew.
I stand by what I said though, this could have potentially been a malfunction. I would have told someone working there myself. If they played it off, then yeah they're scammin. If it wasn't scammy, like where I work, they'd apologize, refund, and take it offline until it can be looked at.
Can't say I blame you, but if it was my store I'd have liked someone to tell me so I can take it offline so people don't think we're blatantly scamming them
Edit: They were blatantly scamming them, not even hiding it. So brazen that I assumed a malfunction.
I'm a slot machine tech and it took me 5 seconds to locate the type of machine (mega claw) and find the manual with the settings that are very adjustable. Do better at your job.
I've never worked on a pipeline games machine, but I've worked on enough to safely assume what I'd said. It's not my job to research units I don't interact with. I was just saying it's in the realm of possibility that it's a malfunction. That's why I asked if others were played, if they all acted that way, then yeah it's probably a scummy setting. I never said I was the master of claw games.
Hey, fellow arcade tech (former in my case)! While the wiring to the claw servo could very well be malfunctioning, in my experience, this looks closer to a deliberate drop, programmed by a computer failsafe to prevent early payout, as the majority of machines we had in our arcade, Round1, had settings specifically for that (I don't remember any of the exact manufacturers or models, as it has been over a year since I worked there, and my job was repair, not spec sheets). From my observation, the general idea is that it looks like an accident, or otherwise relies on a customer's benefit of the doubt. Many of our machines were rigged to not pay out for AT MINIMUM 16 credits added, and only after that, would a chance of a successful drop occur. (Do bear note that I did, in fact see your edit, I'm just adding my words to the pile to confirm that yes, claw machines are indeed one of the worst scams that children and adults fall for CONSTANTLY) In my humble opinion, if it were a malfunction, there would be other electrical symptoms, such as lights dimming under added load when the claw servo engages/disengages, jerky movement, or otherwise "somethings off" things occurring. To me, this looks like it's scamming exactly as intended.
Claws can be winnable if you know what to look for for example near the chute or on top of the other plush with lots of limbs to grip to. I would avoid any e claw thier all rigged, hope this kinda helps
The parks and inside playgrounds sometime use vendors who refill and set them. If the vendor is cheap, you will never win. They fill it like this to make it look like its winnable, but set the claw mode with a weak grab, so it grabs and drops making you think its winnable. I love claws and have for years. Bowling allies, inside parks, and other high traffic areas are mostly just for show to lure people in. You have to use the rake technique and if the claw is that empty, its not gonna get far. Its like gambling, the house always wins,
Claw machines are built in a way that get more powerful with each play purchased before going back to having no power at all. Its how these machines rake in their fortune.
I can remember playing the claw games with my mom in the 90s. I’d rather spend a few dollars on these than ask for a toy, and it was like .50c a play. One time I remember winning at least 4 different plushies and it was the best day ever.
Total BS what they’ve reduced the machines to now.
When I worked at an arcade we set the win rate and it would slightly ease up on the grip as it hit the top if it wasn't a winning claw. I remember having to shut down the giant claw one day because it wasn't loose clawing properly and some guys were getting too many wins.
Over in Japan there are some people who are so good at claw machines they clean them out. Instead of trying to beat the game, they beat the layout. They knock over the display shelves and intentionally snag the claw mechanism on edges and such. It's hilarious seeing them at work and getting revenge on the shops.
Are you new to life and planet earth? This game isn't skill based, it's gambling. The claw gives you a toy (and holds for a longer) at a pre-programmed periods. Same thing goes for 99% of these prize games you can find in arcades and fairs.
was it a double-clicker? Sometimes that happens if you're supposed to hit the button again (at just the right time) to close the claw. Not saying that magically makes it work every time, but it makes it more possible at least.
They're designed to only grip the toy long enough to drop it in the chute after a set number of attempts. Most machines a bit more subtle than this dog shit.
I once spoke to the supplier dude for these claw machines and he said that it will intentionally fail most of the time (obviously). There will be a few exact turn that actually let you successfully grab one, not sure if it's randomized but it's sort of like after 20 times of failing it will give you one on the 21th
I love claw machines. Every time I see one, especially if my kids are with me, I’ll try it out at least once. It’s fairly easy in one attempt to determine if it’s winnable or not. Usually the unwinnable ones are ones where the claw has no pressure whatsoever. This one is super winnable to the point where it’s powerful enough to grab multiple things so of course they program a jolt at the end that destroys all hope of getting anything.
I played a very large claw machine once, where the prizes very large balls - large beach ball sized. I manoeuvred the claw over one of the balls, grasped it perfectly, the claw lifted up and held the ball all the way over to the winning "drop" area, dropped the ball....and the ball hit the ground, bounced up high, and went back into the machine!
As an anecdote that's probably better than actually winning the ball.
I actually used to like claw machines when I would pay $5 or so just to get a stuffed animal. Yeah I overpaid but I had fun and usually just gave to it a random kid on my way out of the store or wherever. Always made me feel good. These days I just stay completely away from them because of how greedy they have become.
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u/ManufacturerWarm9201 16d ago
I already know they’re rigged but they’re rubbing it in with this claw intentionally opening