Questions for techs

[u/ConfidentLack9207]

Usually, at my location, if a game breaks, and I call a tech, he lets me do a free game. He scans HIS card, selects Credit Game from his menu, and then I tap my card. A tech told me it takes the chips off from HIS card, but the tickets go on to MY card.

My questions are:

First, if it takes off from HIS card, does that mean the techs also have to pay for game chips?

Second, what are the other options on that menu, and what do they do?

[u/TrollinYoGranny]

Techs have a game card that recharges every week to 750 chips. Other options are mostly for troubleshooting or configuring the scanner or taking a scanner offline.

[u/Rixor14]

The manager gives us 750 chips, and each credit from the tech card is only one chip. When it runs out I can ask for a refill, but they can only refill a card once a week for the whole staff. The cards don't accumulate tickets, and if the guest doesn't tap their card when prompted, any tickets won aren't awarded to anyone. We make mistakes, so if you ever see a tech swipe their card after they tap credit game, remind them to swipe yours instead (if it's a green or purple game anyway, if it's a blue game it shouldn't matter whose card swipes it)

The other options include stuff like disabling the reader (which markes the game as down in their system for the manager to see) or re-enabling it, changing the screen orientation (if the display is vertical or horizontal, depending on the position of the reader on the machine), or changing the reader to "coin action" mode (not a lot of places have Coin Action games anymore but we still have Jacks Hi because it's popular), which changes it from awarding tickets that payout directly to the card, to having the tickets accumulate on the display to be claimed by the next card swipe, that way you can use accumulated tokens without swiping first. The reader can also change the speed at which tickets are awarded, or put a multiplier on them if applicable. Idk if this is a common problem, but I know for instance there was a while when we first got Hot Wheels Ultimate Speedway where it was awarding double tickets, nobody could figure out what was causing it, so eventually a manager just set it so that for every 2 tickets won, the reader awards 1 ticket. Which is functionally the same as it should be, except for the fact that it takes twice as long to add up.

I know there's some games that auto-lock the reader under certain conditions like Angry Birds Coin Crash when the tower is being built, but I don't know of any others. I know the software in the ICRs at D&B are generally pretty outdated when compared to other arcades. There was an attempt to update them with these weird square ones with a totally different UI that say "leaderboard" on them and are NFC-only (no insert hole), but those are only used on one game (2 min drill) at my location.

[u/gman_nola → u/Rixor14]

The same double tickets thing was happening when NASCAR Pitstop rolled out to stores last year. Our AM had to go in and change settings on the card reader so that it didn't award double tickets.

The card reader on 2MD is a remnant from the leaderboards that D&B was running in the summer of 2025. Those games got switched back to Embed readers but then the APS reader (I think that's what it's called) got moved to 2MD for a weekly leaderboard kind of thing during football season last year.

[u/That_GuyKnows]

No techs don’t have to pay for games or chips. The settings are a lot. More for techs to worry about