Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
Quote Originally Posted by sonatine View Post
I wonder... I got the impression that they had this software in dev long before the collapse... unless Maven saw the end coming a lot sooner than anyone else did of course.
It was in dev before the collapse.

But if you read the press release, it says in no uncertain terms that Mavens won't be used going forward, and a flimsy reason is given regarding the "architecture".

It was obvious that Seals 1 had some kind of relationship with Mavens (they got their updates versions before the rest of us). I assumed, as did many others, that Mavens was given a piece of ownership and abandoned it when the shit went down, and was one of the people who wanted his association to end on Feb 11.

Otherwise, it would have been left open to Micon regarding deciding when to roll out 2.0. Here it was presented as 2.0 or no launch.
I think it was very unlikely that Mavens developer, Briggs Softworks or its principal, Kent Briggs, had any piece of Seals. His business model, as far as I know is to either (a) sell an off-the-shelf $500 play-money site server with no source and limited opportunities for customization through a basic API, or (b) sell the source of PM Version 3 (they're currently on V4) for around 10K. From the old Seals it appeared that they had purchased the old version and done some basic mods - converting to RM, adding a cashier) but not done some of the additional heavy lifting needed to keep up with the new features in V4 (lobby game filters, to name just one) or the increased demands of their users. Furthermore, from our dealings with Briggs, I don't think he would go jeopardize a very successful business (they market several other widely used non-gaming apps) by associating with a real-money poker operation run by Micon or anyone else.

Some of the other comments in this thread are however, right on point. The PM architecture is incredibly robust and well tested. As for Grid-who knows? But I'd bet that the number of hands played in the wild by their system is just a fraction of that for PM. So maybe we should not be too surprised with their current problems. A further question is what technical and/or financial resources Micon has at his disposal to take care of these.