A Full Analysis of Scatter Pays (Pays Anywhere) – How Wins With 8 or More Symbols Anywhere Work, and Their History

Scatter pays needs no lined-up or touching symbols, only a count of the same symbol. We break down the calculation and the multiplier orb sum rule with real paytable numbers, and cover the evolution from Sweet Bonanza in 2019 to Super Scatter and 2500, plus how other providers adopted it.

the-dog-houseAI Slot Magazine

Published2026.10.23

Reading time22 min

ProvidersPragmatic Play

Scatter Pays is a slot win mechanic where a win occurs whenever the same symbol appears a set number of times or more anywhere on the screen. There is no need to line up paylines or have symbols touching each other; it simply counts “how many of the same symbol are visible.” Pragmatic Play calls this Pays Anywhere, and the most common setup is a 6×5 screen with 8 or more as the threshold.

This is an in-depth guide that works through how scatter pays is calculated using real paytable numbers, how it spread from Sweet Bonanza in 2019, how it combines with multiplier orbs, how it evolved through 1000, Super Scatter and 2500, and how other providers adopted the mechanic. For game figures, we gave priority to the providers’ official pages, press releases and in-game data.

The three rules that make up scatter pays

Most scatter pays games run on the following three rules.

• Count rule: if the same symbol appears the base number of times or more anywhere on the screen, it wins. Position and order don’t matter.
• Tier rule: payouts are set by count tiers. Pragmatic’s flagship games use three tiers: 8-9, 10-11, and 12 or more.
• Cascade rule: winning symbols disappear and new symbols fall in from above. Since it only counts symbols, it is almost always paired with cascades (tumbles).

This is where the origin of the name shows. Originally, a “scatter” referred to a special symbol that paid out or triggered free spins based on how many appeared, regardless of reel position. Scatter pays extends this rule from a single special symbol to every regular symbol on the screen. That is why it got the name: every symbol pays like a scatter.

Scatter pays timeline at a glance

• June 2019: Pragmatic Play releases Sweet Bonanza, with a 6×5 grid, pays for 8 or more, tumbles, and a free spins multiplier symbol sum structure
• February 2021: Gates of Olympus releases, with multiplier orbs up to 500x appearing in the base game too
• September 2021: Starlight Princess releases, extending the same structure with an anime-style theme
• April 2022: Blueprint Gaming Bison Bonanza launches, promoting its ‘Scatter Pays’ model
• December 2022: NetEnt Cupcakes combines its Avalanche feature with scatter pays
• October 2023: Starlight Princess 1000 starts the ‘1000’ lineup with the multiplier cap raised to 1,000x
• December 2023: Gates of Olympus 1000, 15,000x max win
• June 2024: Sweet Bonanza 1000, 25,000x max win
• January 2025: Hacksaw Gaming Klowns, a 6×5 game using an ‘All Scatter Win’ approach
• February 2025: Nolimit City Duck Hunters, a scatter pays engine with up to 30,000x
• April 2025: Gates of Olympus Super Scatter, 50,000x with 4 Super Scatters
• May 2025: Play’n GO Treats of Terror, a variant that lowers the base count to 6
• July 2025: Sweet Bonanza Super Scatter releases
• April 2026: Sweet Bonanza 2500, multiplier symbol cap of 2,500x
• August 2026: Gates of Olympus POP, an entry-level variant on a 3×5 grid that pays for 5 or more
• September 2026: Gates of Olympus 2500 releases

Origins – a ‘tipping point of spread’ more than a clear ‘first’

It is not clearly documented who created scatter pays first. Within the range of producer press releases and public sources that AI Slot checked, we could not find a reliable record identifying the first game to apply an “pays anywhere” rule to every regular symbol. On the other hand, industry sources largely agree that Pragmatic Play’s Sweet Bonanza was the turning point that popularized the mechanic.

Unlike Megaways, which spread through licensing agreements as a registered trademark of Big Time Gaming, there is no record of a specific company holding exclusive rights to the name Scatter Pays or selling licenses for it. That’s why each company uses a different name.

• Pays Anywhere (Pay Anywhere): Pragmatic Play, Yggdrasil family
• Scatter Pays: NetEnt, Blueprint Gaming, Nolimit City, Play’n GO and others
• All-scatter wins: Hacksaw Gaming
• Scatter Wins: Red Tiger

June 2019, Sweet Bonanza

According to a press release published in a European industry outlet, Sweet Bonanza was unveiled on June 25, 2019. Candy and fruit symbols fill a 6×5 screen, and 8 or more of the same symbol anywhere is a win. Winning symbols disappear through tumbles, and 4 or more lollipop scatters start 10 free spins. At the time, Pragmatic Play’s Chief Commercial Officer Melissa Summerfield introduced the game as high volatility and expected the tumble feature to be popular with operators and players.

The key is the multiplier symbols in free spins. During free spins, multiplier symbols from 2x to 100x can land, and once the tumble cascade is completely over, all multiplier values on the screen are added and applied to that cascade’s win. According to Pragmatic Play’s official page, the RTP is 96.48% and the max win is 21,175x the bet. The information sent by the game client shows 96.49%, so there is a 0.01 percentage point difference depending on the source.

Sweet Bonanza has no multipliers in the base game, and the big wins are concentrated in free spins. The formula of “scatter pays + tumble + multiplier sum” became the backbone of Pragmatic Play’s new releases for years afterward. The role tumbles play in this formula is covered separately in the full tumble analysis.

Try the calculation yourself – paytable and multiplier orbs

The paytable is split into three tiers

AI Slot checked game data from Pragmatic’s demo server and found that Sweet Bonanza and Gates of Olympus have the exact same base paytable for their 9 regular symbols. Converted to multiples of the bet, it looks like this.

• Top-paying symbol: 8-9 pay 10x, 10-11 pay 25x, 12 or more pay 50x
• Second symbol: 2.5x for 8-9, 10x for 10-11, 25x for 12 or more
• Third symbol: 8-9 pay 2x, 10-11 pay 5x, 12 or more pay 15x
• Lowest-paying symbol: 8-9 pay 0.25x, 10-11 pay 0.75x, 12 or more pay 2x
• Scatter: 4 pay 3x, 5 pay 5x, 6 or more pay 100x

One thing to note is that the 12-or-more tier is bundled into one. A 6×5 grid has 30 cells, but the payout is the same whether the same symbol appears 12 times or 20. So a single win from regular symbols alone is capped at 50x, and the device that breaks this ceiling is the multiplier symbol.

Multiplier orbs are added, not multiplied

Let’s say a single spin in the Gates of Olympus base game played out like this.

• First screen: 10 of the top-paying symbol (25x) and 8 of the lowest-paying symbol (0.25x) win at the same time, for a total of 25.25x
• After the tumble: 9 of the lowest-paying symbol gather again to pay 0.25x, for a cascade total of 25.5x
• A 10x orb and a 5x orb land during the cascade

When the cascade ends, the orb values are added to make 15x, which is applied to the total cascade win of 25.5x. The result is 382.5x the bet. If you multiplied 10x and 5x together to get 50x, it would come to 1,275x, but that calculation is wrong. Pragmatic Play’s official description states that when multiple multiplier symbols appear, their values are added and applied to the total win. Also, orbs that land on a spin with no win have no effect.

The orb values registered in the game data for Gates of Olympus are 15 types: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500x. Sweet Bonanza has 13 types from 2x to 100x.

Multipliers stack up in free spins

Free spins in Gates of Olympus are awarded with 4 or more scatters, for 15 spins. During them, the values of orbs that land on winning spins keep adding to an ‘accumulated multiplier’. For example, if the accumulated multiplier built up to 20x in earlier spins and a 5x orb lands on this winning spin, the accumulated multiplier becomes 25x and is applied to this win. According to the official explanation, the accumulated multiplier applies when a new orb lands on a winning spin, so wins without an orb don’t get it. By contrast, free spins in the original Sweet Bonanza add and use only the orbs from that spin’s cascade. Even within Scatter Pays, the character of free spins splits sharply at this point.

What Gates of Olympus changed

Gates of Olympus, revealed on February 25, 2021, kept the Sweet Bonanza grid but changed two things. First, multiplier orbs drop in the base game too. Second, the orb cap rose from 100x to 500x, and multipliers accumulate during free spins. At the reveal, Pragmatic’s Chief Business Development Officer Yossi Bargeli explained that the Pay Anywhere feature adds new dynamics to the game. This is where the provider itself called the mechanic ‘Pay Anywhere’.

The official RTP is 96.50%, and the max win recorded in the game data is 5,000x the bet. The max win is lower than Sweet Bonanza’s, but because orbs can hit in the base game too, the tension of each spin feels different. This game became Pragmatic’s biggest series, continuing into 1000, Xmas, Dice, Super Scatter, 2500, and POP. In September of the same year, Starlight Princess followed, carrying the same structure into an anime-style theme.

Three ways to make the numbers bigger

Regular symbol payouts in scatter pays cap out at 50x. So in its sequels, Pragmatic Play kept the rules of the board and evolved the game by growing the numbers outside the board.

1000 and 2500 – raising the cap on multiplier symbols

Starlight Princess 1000, revealed on October 26, 2023, raised the multiplier symbol cap to 1,000x, and Gates of Olympus 1000, released on December 14 of the same year, raised the max win to 15,000x. Sweet Bonanza 1000, revealed in June 2024, raised the free spins multiplier to up to 1,000x and the max win to 25,000x. Pragmatic presents these games together as the 1000 series.

In 2026 the cap rose again. Sweet Bonanza 2500, released on April 30, has multiplier symbols up to 2,500x, but its max win stayed at 25,000x, the same as the 1000 version. Gates of Olympus 2500 followed in September. If the max win limit stays the same while the multiplier cap grows, what changes is the path to a big win and how often you reach it.

Super Scatter – making the scatter itself a source of wins

Gates of Olympus Super Scatter, revealed on April 28, 2025, attached an instant win to the scatters that trigger free spins. Depending on how many Super Scatters appear when free spins trigger, it pays 100x for 1, 500x for 2, 5,000x for 3, and 50,000x for 4 right away. Four of them alone is the 50,000x max win. The same feature was then added to Mahjong Wins, Sweet Bonanza (July 2025), and Starlight Princess (October 2025).

Variants that changed the structure itself

Some variants changed the rules. Sweet Rush Bonanza, released in September 2025, keeps the 8-or-more payout but leaves a mark on the spots where winning symbols landed, so when a win lands on the same spot again, the multiplier doubles starting at 2x up to 128x. Gates of Olympus POP, released on August 31, 2026, arrived alongside the launch of the beginner-friendly sub-brand ‘POP’, shrinking the grid to 3×5 and lowering the base count to 5.

Scatter pays outside Pragmatic Play

From around 2022, scatter pays spread quickly to other providers. Most keep the 6×5 screen and the 8-symbol threshold as is, then layer on their own signature features.

NetEnt – combining with Avalanche

According to NetEnt’s official information, Cupcakes was released on December 7, 2022. It pays when 8 or more candies of the same color appear anywhere, and new symbols drop in through NetEnt’s cascade feature, Avalanche. It has a distinctive structure where 2×2 cupcake symbols collect candies to grow multipliers. With a 96.05% RTP, 32% hit frequency, and 2,700x max win, its max win is on the lower side compared with Pragmatic’s flagship games. Milkshake XXXtreme, released on February 8, 2023, uses the same ‘Scatter Pays plus Avalanche’ combination.

Hacksaw, Nolimit City and Play’n GO – each with its own grammar

Hacksaw Gaming calls this mechanic “all-scatter wins.” Klowns, released in January 2025, pays for 8 or more on a 6×5 screen, collects all wins in an off-screen “total win bar,” and applies the multiplier at the end. The max win is 10,000x.

According to Nolimit City’s official information, Duck Hunters, released on February 11, 2025, uses a scatter pays engine that pays for 8 or more, with a 96.05% RTP and a 30,000x max win. Play’n GO’s Treats of Terror (May 15, 2025) lowers the base to 6 and adds cash symbols and collector symbols. 4ThePlayer’s 2 Sweet 4 U (September 19, 2024), distributed by Yggdrasil, uses the same name as Pragmatic, ‘Pay Anywhere’.

Scatter Pays Through AI Slot Data

The data shows Pragmatic Play still accounts for an overwhelming share of Scatter Pays games, followed by Yggdrasil and NetEnt. The features attached most often are free spins, tumbles, and multipliers, in that order, showing that the ‘Scatter Pays + Tumble + Multiplier’ formula Sweet Bonanza created is still the standard. The 6×5 layout is the most common, and new releases from 2023 onward make up most of the list, confirming that this approach has spread rapidly in recent years.

How to read the numbers in a scatter pays game

Games with the same name can have different RTPs

Even for the same Pragmatic Play game, operators can choose from several RTP versions. AI Slot lists the base figures the provider has published, but the version you actually play may be lower. It is a good habit to check the RTP yourself on the in-game info screen.

The max win is a ceiling, not a goal

Like the 50,000x for 4 Super Scatters, a max win number catches the eye, but it is only the limit that game can pay out. When the limit is reached, the round ends on the spot. A big max win generally points to wide swings in results.

Telling the multiplier cap from the max win

Numbers like 1000 and 2500 are the cap on a single multiplier symbol. Even when the multiplier cap grows, as in Sweet Bonanza 2500, the max win can stay the same. Guessing the max win from the number in a game’s name alone is easy to get wrong.

The hit frequency trap

Scatter pays games are used together with tumbles, which makes the screen feel like it is bursting often. But hit frequency is just the share of spins that win at least once, and most of those are small payouts from the 8-9 tier. Unless the hit frequency is published, as with Cupcakes, it is best not to judge by feel alone.

Points to check in the demo

If you try a Scatter Pays game in a free demo, check the following first.

• Base count: whether it’s 8, or a variant lowered to 6 or 5
• Paytable tiers: how big the payout gap is between 8-9, 10-11, and 12 or more
• Multiplier location: whether multipliers appear in the base game too, or only in free spins
• How free spins multipliers work: whether they reset each spin or accumulate
• Scatter conditions: whether 4 triggers the feature, and whether an instant win such as Super Scatter is attached

Frequently Asked Questions

Are scatter pays and Pays Anywhere the same feature?

It’s the same feature. A mechanic that pays when the same symbol appears a set number of times or more anywhere on the screen is called Pay Anywhere by Pragmatic, Scatter Pays by NetEnt and Nolimit City, and All Scatter Win by Hacksaw Gaming.

How is it different from cluster pays?

In cluster pays, the same symbols must touch each other horizontally or vertically to win. Scatter pays does not require symbols to touch and simply counts the total across the screen. If 8 of the same symbol are scattered around, that is a win in scatter pays but may not be a win in cluster pays.

What was the first scatter pays slot?

No reliable source has been found that identifies the first game to apply this rule to all regular symbols. The general view in the industry is that the tipping point for its popularization was Pragmatic Play’s Sweet Bonanza in June 2019.

If two multiplier orbs appear, are they multiplied together?

No. In Pragmatic Play’s scatter pays games, all multiplier values that land during a cascade are added together, and that sum is applied to the total win of the whole cascade. If a 10x and a 5x land, the result is 15x, not 50x.

Does the payout get bigger if 12 or more land?

Sweet Bonanza and Gates of Olympus group 12 or more into a single tier, paying the same whether it is 12 or 20 symbols. Paytables differ from game to game, though, so the most accurate way to check the tiers is the paytable screen in the demo.

Is the 1000 version better than the original?

It cannot be split into better or worse. The 1000 versions are a high-volatility design that raises the multiplier cap and max win at the cost of wider swings in results. The RTP is at a similar level to the original, and which version to pick is a matter of the rhythm you prefer.

Related reads

The history of the cascade feature that always goes hand in hand with scatter pays is covered in the full tumble analysis guide, and Megaways, another “no paylines” mechanic, is in the full Megaways analysis guide. If you are curious about mechanics where symbols must be adjacent to win, see the wiki’s Cluster Pays entry; for the lineage of sequels with boosted multipliers, see the 1000 version entry; and for scatters with an instant win attached, see the Super Scatter entry. To check the rhythm of the original yourself, start by opening the Sweet Bonanza demo.

Sources: Pragmatic Play official game pages (Sweet Bonanza, Gates of Olympus, Gates of Olympus 1000, Starlight Princess 1000, Sweet Bonanza 1000, Super Scatter series, Sweet Rush Bonanza), Pragmatic Play demo game data (paytables, multiplier values, max win), European Gaming press releases (June 25, 2019 Sweet Bonanza; February 25, 2021 Gates of Olympus; September 23, 2021 Starlight Princess; October 26, 2023 Starlight Princess 1000; June 3, 2024 Sweet Bonanza 1000; May 4, 2026 Sweet Bonanza 2500; April 2022 Bison Bonanza), iNTERGAME (December 14, 2023 Gates of Olympus 1000; October 30, 2025 Starlight Princess Super Scatter), AGB and GGRAsia (April 28, 2025 Gates of Olympus Super Scatter), Yogonet (June 3, 2024; August 1, 2025), Gaming Intelligence (August 3, 2026 POP roadmap), Focus Gaming News (September 28, 2026 Gates of Olympus 2500), and the official game pages of NetEnt, Nolimit City, Hacksaw Gaming, Play’n GO and Yggdrasil