I didn’t want to be unfair and just single out Full Tilt for problems with their last update so it should be noted that Ongame which is launching their new P5 Engine hasn’t had things going its way either.
Between June 9th and the 16th they rolled out the P5 update to each of their skins/licensees. As you can see from the chart (data from Poker Scout) their traffic was markedly down during that period but that is to be expected as entire rooms went dark during the upgrade. The more interesting part is how they numbers have failed to bounce back to their previous levels.
It looks like they’re missing about 1000 or so players daily. They seem to have hit the 5000 player mark a few times more recently but the overall trend doesn’t look good. That’s millions in lost revenue for both Ongame and their skins.
Some of that could be WSOP related but the chart obviously tells a story.
A big part of the dissatisfaction about the P5 Engine is that it actually contains fewer features than the product it replaces. Some are even calling it a downgrade rather than an upgrade. That combined with stability issues and other bugs has caused many to share similar sentiments as this Poker Scout reviewer:
Already in the previous software the CPU load was way too high on some computers, it took VERY long to fix some old bugs, and every update beetween made something worse. I can’t understand why they didn’t fire the software developers then, and now it seems they’ve even made a new software with the same crew. At least the quality of the software supports that belief.
I loved some things in the old software. I liked the looks of it, it was quite fast in a sense of hands dealt per hour, and there was 10 seats to sit in even in HU and 3 handed games. There was some annoyances in the functionality but in the end it came out pretty good. Just lobby still annoyed the hell out of me. (Used to be pretty good but they f***** the lobby up in one of their updates and left it that way.)
Now the new software ruined the looks and clarity for me and there’s so much bugs and downtimes I’ve been too afraid to play a single real money hand on it. They’ve also f***** the lobby up even further, and I’ve read that money you have on tables when the software crashes vanishes from your account for several days. Who wants to worry if you’re ever going to get your money back or not. Also the CPU load has gotten even higher compared to the old software.
It’s always a huge risk to do any sort of major overhaul of your core product. Even if you get it right many players will not be happy because they want the old system. It sounds like Ongame should have let this one cook in the oven a little more before serving it.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
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