I have seen some people talking about this online and a few people in my social circle mentioned it. From what I gather, it seems as if the odds of winning on slots and such have gone down in terms of bigger wins. I wonder if this is down to Vegas losing money from COVID or if this is because fewer people are playing in general.
I am not sure if this is something you can actually measure. I think you are probably right that because fewer people were going, the hits and big wins slowed down. That seems logical.
I don't think they can alter stuff like this by law. At least not as far as I know. They can't adjust or rig things in any favor. I mean gambling ALWAYS favors the house but still. So I would suspect it was because less people were going during the high point of the covid scare.
A friend of mine who has gone every other year since I have known him said something about this last year when he went. As mentioned though, there are laws set in place so I highly doubt anything was changed. It was likely from the amounts of people playing shifting around.
I think that they are set and only change if laws on them do. I might be wrong though as I never really looked into the legal side of it. I just avoid the bigger casinos as I seldom win in those.