Great.com’s Playtime Rankings Put ELK Studios on Top
Working out which slot studio makes players stick around for longest is trickier than counting spins, but that is exactly what free-play data platform Great.com has tried to do with its latest monthly breakdown. The September figures put ELK Studios in first place for average session length, with several names familiar from UK lobbies filling out the rest of the top ten.
What’s been released
Great.com has approached the question of which casino game providers keep players playing after the first spin through its September demo data, ranking ten studios by average session duration.
The method relies on the site’s free-to-play demo slots, which let visitors try games without deposits or cash prizes, giving Great.com a way of observing
how long visitors choose to continue playing
rather than simply how many people click through.
The full September ranking places ELK Studios first, followed by Inspired Gaming Group, Pragmatic Play, Reel Kingdom, Play’n GO, Hacksaw Gaming, PG SOFT (Pocket Games Soft), NOVOMATIC, Games Global and Nolimit City.
Several of those names, Pragmatic Play, Play’n GO, Hacksaw Gaming and Games Global among them, already sit at the heart of UK casino lobbies, which makes the ordering a useful snapshot of engagement rather than just reach.
How it plays
The ranking is built around session length rather than visit volume, and Great.com is explicit that the two measures do not always line up.
Providers that attract many visits may not necessarily have the longest average sessions, and several studios that frequently appear near the top of its most-played rankings did not make this month’s list.
That distinction matters for how you read the result: a studio can dominate on raw footfall while losing out here to a rival whose games simply hold attention for longer once someone starts playing.
ELK Studios’ win came down to breadth rather than a single standout title.
ELK Studios took first place with more than 100 titles represented in play on the platform, with Great.com highlighting this catalogue size as part of the result, distinguishing broad performance across games from attention concentrated on a single title.
By contrast,
Inspired Gaming Group had 26 titles represented, while NOVOMATIC had nine.
Great.com also applied a floor before any studio could be considered.
All ten providers had to pass a minimum activity threshold before appearing in the results, though the post does not disclose the threshold or the individual providers’ session averages.
The company is careful about what conclusions can be drawn from the numbers, noting that
it reflects session behaviour on Great.com, and the company does not claim that demo-session duration directly predicts how people will behave when playing for real money.
Where it fits
For UK players, the ranking works less as a verdict on any single game and more as a monthly temperature check on which studios are producing content people want to keep exploring. ELK Studios has built its reputation on narrative-driven, high-production slots that tend to reward longer engagement over snack-sized spins, so a win built on catalogue depth rather than one viral title fits the studio’s usual positioning. Seeing Pragmatic Play, Play’n GO, Hacksaw Gaming and Games Global alongside it is a reminder that the suppliers UK operators lean on most heavily are also holding their own when measured purely on how long a demo session lasts, rather than on marketing push or new-release hype. Great.com runs this kind of ranking regularly, alongside separate monthly lists tracking fastest-rising studios and most-played individual slots, giving operators and players a recurring, if informal, barometer of where attention in the free-play space is currently sitting.
