For three years and four games, ELK Studios did the one thing almost no studio does. It shipped a single fixed return, 94.00 percent, with no cheaper versions for a casino to choose from.
On the fifth game it stopped. Pirots 5 arrived in July 2026 with a headline of 96.00 percent and four lower builds behind it, and the lowest of them pays 87.
The headline went up by two points. The floor fell through. Those two facts arrived in the same release and only one of them is on the marketing.
ELK publishes none of it. Every figure on this page about the versions comes from the slot databases, because the studio’s own game pages do not carry a return at all.
What ELK Studios Publishes About Itself
The company page is short and the licensing section is the useful part of it.
| Figure | What the studio publishes | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2013 | Its own about page |
| Great Britain | ELKAB Studios AB, Gambling Commission account 40844 | Its own about page |
| Malta | ELK Studios Malta Ltd, MGA/B2B/605/2018, issued 27 February 2019 | Its own about page |
| Romania | Two Second Class licences, 821/15.05.2020 and 820/15.05.2020 | Its own about page |
| Canada and Greece | Regulator logos shown, no licence numbers given | Its own about page |
| Return to player on any game | Nothing | Nowhere |
| Hit frequency on any game | Nothing | Nowhere |
| Headquarters, owner, catalog size | Nothing | Nowhere |
Five regulators named or shown, which is more than most studios bother with. Not one number a player could use to price a session.
Four Games at One Price, Then the Fifth
The Pirots series is the clearest record of a studio changing its mind, and it is worth reading in order.
| Game | Released | Return to player | Cheaper builds for the casino to choose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pirots | March 2023 | 94.00 percent | None |
| Pirots 2 | November 2023 | 94 percent | None reported |
| Pirots 3 | June 2024 | 94 percent | None reported |
| Pirots 4 | July 2025 | 94 percent | None reported |
| Pirots 5 | July 2026 | 96.00 percent as the default | 94, 92, 90 and 87 percent |
Four games in a row with one price each. Then one game with five, reported by two independent databases and published by the studio nowhere.
Read the last row twice. The number everyone will quote is 96.00, and it is the best figure the series has ever carried.
It is also the top of a ladder that now reaches down to 87 percent, which is a worse build than anything the series shipped when it was being simple.
So the honest summary is not that ELK improved. It is that ELK joined everybody else, and the only thing that changed for a player is that there is now a question to ask before you spin.
What the Build Lottery Costs on Pirots 5
Six hundred spins an hour at fifty cents is three hundred euros of turnover. Here is what each of the five builds takes out of that hour.
| Build | House edge | Cost of an hour at 0.50 | Cost of an hour at 1.00 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 96.00 percent, the default | 4.00 percent | 12.00 euros | 24.00 euros |
| 94.00 percent | 6.00 percent | 18.00 euros | 36.00 euros |
| 92.00 percent | 8.00 percent | 24.00 euros | 48.00 euros |
| 90.00 percent | 10.00 percent | 30.00 euros | 60.00 euros |
| 87.00 percent | 13.00 percent | 39.00 euros | 78.00 euros |
The same game, the same stake, the same hour. The bottom build costs 3.25 times the top one, and nothing in the lobby tells you which one you opened.
Fifty euros at twenty cents a spin survives about ten and a half hours on the 96 build. On the 87 build the same balance lasts about three and a quarter.
That is seven hours of your evening, decided by a licensing choice you were never shown. It is the sharpest example of the build lottery anywhere on this site.
What ELK’s Own Game Page Shows You
Here is the first Pirots, the fixed one, as the studio presents it against what the databases report for the same game.
| Figure | On ELK’s own game page | What the databases report |
|---|---|---|
| Return to player | Nothing | 94.00 percent, agreed by five databases |
| Volatility | Nothing | High on three, medium to high on two |
| Hit frequency | Nothing | 26.80 percent on three |
| Maximum win | 10,000x the bet | 10,000x on four sources, 20,000x on SlotCatalog, 25,000x on ClashOfSlots |
| Odds of that maximum win | Nothing | Nothing |
| Release date | Nothing | 7 March 2023 on four, 6 March on AboutSlots |
| Bet range | Nothing on the page | 0.20 to 100.00 euros from the data sheets |
The page links a product sheet and a game data sheet as PDF files, and prints exactly one figure in the page itself. A PDF is not something you open in a lobby on a phone, thirty seconds before you spin.
Look at the maximum win row, because it is the one figure the studio does publish and the databases still cannot agree on it. At twenty cents a spin, 10,000x is 2,000 euros, 20,000x is 4,000 and 25,000x is 5,000.
I went with the studio’s own 10,000x, because when a source contradicts the people who built the game, the people who built the game win. The full reading is in my Pirots review.
Now apply that same blank page to Pirots 5. A game with five builds, and a studio page that will not tell you one of them exists.
The Feature Buys That Price Nothing
ELK sells five ways to skip the wait, under the name X-iter. Each one has a price in multiples of your bet.
| Mode | What it costs | Published return for that mode |
|---|---|---|
| Bonus Hunt | 3x the bet | Nothing |
| Feature Bonanza | 10x the bet | Nothing |
| Maximum Grid Size | 25x the bet | Nothing |
| Bonus Game | 100x the bet | Nothing |
| Super Bonus | 500x the bet | Nothing |
Five prices, five blanks. A feature buy changes the mathematics of the game you are playing, so a buy with no published return is a price with no product attached to it.
The Bonus Hunt is sold as giving more than four times the chance of reaching the bonus. The baseline chance is never published anywhere.
Four times an unpublished number is still an unpublished number. That is the clearest example on this whole site of a disclosure that discloses nothing.
How to Check an ELK Game Before You Deposit
This check used to be short on ELK games. Since Pirots 5 it is the same length as everywhere else.
| Step | What you are doing |
|---|---|
| 1 | Open the game in demo mode, before any deposit decision |
| 2 | Open the information panel, usually behind an “i” button or the menu |
| 3 | Read the return to player and write the exact figure down |
| 4 | On the newer titles, treat anything under 96 as the lobby having chosen a cheaper build |
| 5 | Repeat at a second casino, because an 87 percent build announces itself nowhere else |
On the older Pirots titles there is one answer and the check is a formality. On Pirots 5 it is worth 27 euros an hour at fifty cents a spin, which is the whole gap between the top and bottom builds.
If the panel is missing or blank, that is a verdict on the operator rather than on the studio. The longer version of the check sits on my page about how to find a slot’s RTP.
ELK Next to the Studios That Always Shipped Several Prices
Until this year ELK was the easy answer to the question this site keeps asking. One price, no lottery, nothing to check.
On Sweet Bonanza Xmas, Pragmatic Play publishes six returns across three ranges and labels none. On Fire in the Hole, Nolimit City publishes three and names each one, so you can tell which you have. Novomatic publishes nothing at all.
ELK has now moved into the same territory as Pragmatic, with one difference that matters. Pragmatic at least prints its figures somewhere. ELK’s spread from 96 down to 87 is reported only by third parties.
Here is the line worth taking away. A studio that removes the build lottery has given you something real, and it can take it back in a single release without announcing anything.
Every studio reviewed here is sorted by what it publishes on my game providers page.
Which Casinos Reviewed Here Carry ELK Studios
Two thirds of the casinos I have reviewed carry the studio, so the logo narrows nothing by itself. The table shows the band you would be choosing from.
| Casino | My score |
|---|---|
| National Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| HellSpin Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| CasinoChan Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| Asino Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| 22Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| Playfina Casino | 7 out of 10 |
| BetiBet Casino | 6 out of 10 |
| Spinanga Casino | 6 out of 10 |
| StoneVegas Casino | 6 out of 10 |
| Lamabet Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| 1Bet Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| BillyBets Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| SafeCasino | 5 out of 10 |
| Winnerz Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| Rolletto Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| Tsars Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| Nomini Casino | 5 out of 10 |
| FEZbet Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| Cadoola Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| Buran Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| WinRolla Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| RoyalGame Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| Wazamba Casino | 4 out of 10 |
| Zet Casino | 4 out of 10 |
Scores are mine and they judge the operator, not the studio. The highest scoring casino on this site carries no ELK games at all, which is worth knowing before a logo wall decides anything for you.
A 7 out of 10 operator serving a 94.00 percent game is still serving a 94.00 percent game. The operator decides your terms. The studio decided the price long before you arrived.
How I Checked These Numbers
The company and licensing details come from ELK’s own about page, read on 26 October 2026, and the single game figure from its own Pirots page on the same day.
The returns across the series are not published by the studio anywhere. The 94 percent on Pirots, Pirots 2, Pirots 3 and Pirots 4, and the 96 down to 87 ladder on Pirots 5, come from SlotCatalog and AboutSlots, read on 26 October 2026, with the earlier figures cross checked against the five databases named in my Pirots review.
Where sources disagree I have printed the disagreement rather than picking the convenient figure. Where a line says the studio publishes nothing, it means I looked at its own pages and found nothing on the page itself.
If ELK publishes the Pirots 5 version list on its own site, write to me and I will correct this page and date the change. I would rather print that correction than keep this one.
The casino scores are mine, from the four criteria set out in my rating method. No studio and no operator has any say in them.
Where to Go Next
Where to Play ELK Studios Games for Real Money
On the older Pirots titles the price is the same wherever you play, so the operator decides only your bonus terms and how quickly the money comes back out.
On Pirots 5 the operator also decides the price, and the spread is nine points. That makes the choice of lobby worth more on this studio than it was a year ago.
FAQ About ELK Studios Casinos
What is ELK Studios?
It is a slot studio founded in 2013 and licensed in Great Britain, Malta and Romania, with regulator logos for Canada and Greece on its own page. The Pirots series is the title you are most likely to meet, and it now runs to five games.
What is the RTP of Pirots?
The first Pirots is 94.00 percent, a single fixed build with no operator versions, agreed by five independent databases. Pirots 2, Pirots 3 and Pirots 4 all carry the same 94 percent with no cheaper builds reported.
What is the RTP of Pirots 5?
The default is 96.00 percent and four lower builds exist at 94, 92, 90 and 87, reported by SlotCatalog and AboutSlots. Your casino chooses which one it serves, so read the information panel inside the game rather than trusting the headline figure.
Is the Pirots RTP 94 percent or 96.78 percent?
On the first Pirots it is 94.00 percent. The 96.78 figure that circulates comes from a single page title on one database whose own specification table on that same page says 94.00, so read the table and never the headline.
Do ELK games have more than one RTP version?
They did not until 2026, which made this studio unusually safe to play. Pirots 5 changed that with five builds from 96 down to 87 percent, so the answer is now yes on the newest game and no on the four before it.
Does ELK Studios publish its RTP?
No. Its own game pages publish the maximum win and nothing else, and it links a product sheet and a game data sheet as PDF files instead. Every return on this page therefore comes from third party databases rather than from the studio.
What is X-iter?
It is ELK’s feature buy menu, with five prices from three times your bet up to five hundred times. No return is published for any of the five, so you are buying a change to the game’s mathematics without being told what that change is worth.
Is ELK Studios licensed?
Yes, and it names the numbers on its own page. Great Britain under Gambling Commission account 40844, Malta under MGA/B2B/605/2018 issued 27 February 2019, and Romania under two Second Class licences dated 15 May 2020.
Which casinos have ELK Studios games?
Two thirds of the casinos I have reviewed carry the studio, and the table higher up this page names each one with the score I gave it. The band runs from 7 out of 10 down to 4, so the logo tells you very little about the account behind it.
Can I play ELK Studios slots for free?
Yes, and on Pirots 5 the free round has a job beyond entertainment. It is where you open the information panel and find out whether your lobby licensed the 96 build or the 87 one, before any money is involved.
Who Wrote This
I started this page intending to praise a studio, because for four games ELK did the right thing and almost nobody noticed. Then I checked the fifth game and the praise did not survive the checking.
I am responsible for everything published here. The licensing details were read from ELK’s own pages on 26 October 2026 and the version figures from SlotCatalog and AboutSlots on the same day. If one of them stops holding, write to me and I will correct it and date the change.
18+. Gambling can be addictive. Nothing on this page makes an ELK slot a good bet, and the arithmetic above says the opposite. Even the best build of the newest game keeps four euros of every hundred you stake, and the cheapest build keeps thirteen, which is more than three times as fast. The older titles sit at six. What the studio used to give you was certainty about the price, and on its current game that certainty is gone. Decide the stake and the number of spins before you open the lobby, and treat a withdrawal as the end of the session rather than an interruption of it. If gambling has stopped being entertainment, free and confidential help is available in Slovenia through NIJZ.
