Relax Gaming has expanded its ongoing partnership with Big Time Gaming, by becoming the first firm to gain intellectual property rights to the Megaclusters game mechanic.

The deal enables the supplier’s in-house studios and Silver Bullet partners to apply Megaclusters to proprietary titles. The mechanic, which debuted earlier this year in Star Clusters, offers an additional twist to the cluster pay concept.

“BTG is a longstanding and trusted partner of Relax Gaming and it’s fantastic to see our relationship continue to grow with this deal, equipping our slot developers with an exciting new concept to play with,” stated Simon Hammon, Relax Gaming CPO.

“Megaclusters is another great innovation from the makers of Megaways, and we’re proud to be chosen as the first partner to gain the rights to apply this original mechanic to our own games and offer as an option to our Silver Bullet studios.”

The agreement further cements the partnership between BTG and Relax, which both parties assert has gone from strength to strength since first joining forces in 2018. 

As well as holding IP rights to Megaways, Relax was also amongst the first three platform providers to distribute BTG’s content in Europe, and launched games, such as The Final Countdown, with extended exclusivity.

Nik Robinson, CEO at Big Time Gaming, noted: “Having already exceeded our expectations in terms of popularity with players, Megaclusters has the potential to become another successful franchise and we’re excited to see it develop.

“Time and again Relax has demonstrated extraordinary speed-to-market and reliability, so we know that Megaclusters™ will be expertly applied in the hands of their talented studios.”

With Megaclusters, each symbol that forms part of a winning combo splits into four smaller symbols to create more Megaclusters. When combinations appear within these smaller symbols, they explode, and new ones fall into their place until the combos dry up. As such, the 4×4 grid can evolve into as many as 64 tiles during the Megacluster mode.