News
PurePlay Re-launches Poker Site with Software Based on CyberArts FoundationTM Online Gaming Software Platform
Published in eGaming Review, October 2007
Following the U.S. online poker industry's mauling last year at the hands of U.S. legislators, the industry has regrouped and is reinventing itself for another chance via innovative legal models.
The seriousness of the comeback is proven most clearly by San Francisco-based PurePlay.
Seeking robustness and scalability, PurePlay recently re-launched its poker site
serving thousands of simultaneous users on the CyberArts Foundation software platform.
PurePlay is the first and largest legal play-for-cash online poker destination.
The "non-gambling" poker site offers players the excitement, intensity and potential for
large cash winnings of high-stakes competition, yet, thanks to PurePlay's patented
business model - there's absolutely no risk of losing money. PurePlay hosts poker
tournaments in which play-for-free members and $20-a-month subscription members stand
to win substantial cash prizes exceeding $200,000 a month, without ever putting a
player's own money at risk. Since their re-launch, growth has accelerated and player
churn is dramatically lower.
PurePlay launched in 2005 and users rushed in to play. But a tour of
internet chat rooms revealed one big drawback - their first-generation
software was inadequate to the task and frustrated players with lockouts
and crashes.
CEO Jason Kellerman observes: "We originally launched our free poker room in July of '05; by November we decided that we were going to need new software."
PurePlay's next stage of development required a more robust and
scaleable technology than was available from existing software suppliers
. "When the poker industry took off several years ago, many developers
popped up with quickly-built software, but only a handful solved the
tough issues of scalability. Many poker rooms experience frequent
crashes. Our review of nearly 40 alternatives showed that CyberArts'
technology is very, very unique. There aren't that many people on the
planet that actually know how to create enterprise-quality gaming
software, and CyberArts' Chris Derossi happens to be one of them.
The difference between what CyberArts has done and what 95% of the
other folks have done is quite dramatic. There are only 3 or 4 poker
rooms on the planet that can handle our scalability requirements
and many of them are not commercially offered."
CyberArts' Foundation platform allowed PurePlay to grow without
interruptions while adding new features. According to CTO Kevin Flood,
"If you look at the support logs and customer feedback, the difference is quite dramatic.
The number of calls and emails that we get regarding what I would call major issues of disconnects,
and people not being able to get into the room, has declined at least fifty percent."
Customer retention is key to success for any online business and Kellerman adds,
"Our churn numbers have gone down dramatically, and that's because the
software works very reliably, and we can respond to customer feedback and
quickly make player-requested changes."
PurePlay's confidence is evident in the range of new features that they are considering,
including new tournament types, enhanced chat and other exciting community
building features.. Kellerman explains, "In the past, we were afraid to make
too many feature changes. Over the course of two years we made fewer changes
on the prior platform than we've made in two months since switching to
CyberArts. Previously we were afraid to touch the code, and we also didn't
have as responsive a team as we do in the CyberArts engineers.
I can't speak enough for that. When one picks a software developer,
there are some minimum requirements: (1) the software has to work, (2)
it has to be scaleable and (3) it has to be flexible. But at the end of
the day you’re investing in a team of developers, and these guys are very
good, very knowledgeable, and when they make changes, they work."
PurePlay also employs advertising to monetize its customer base.
Jason Kellerman notes, "We require a platform that is flexible, and
allows for a lot of HTML within the room, so we can show different
messaging to different types of users. On most rake sites a user is a
user; whereas on our site there are different levels of subscription
and different classes of users to whom we want to show different
messaging."
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