PokerStars Removes Power Up From Lobby

6 years ago
PokerStars Removes Power Up From Lobby
13:20
13 Oct

The launch of PokerStarsā€™ brand new game Power Up proved to be a short-lived affair this week as the gremlins got into the system ā€“ forcing the company to remove the game from their lobby.

PowerUp, which mixes elements of poker and card-games like Hearthstone and has been called a ā€˜game changerā€™ by the Stars Group behind it, was rolled out in a real-money version this week after several months of play-money testing, but apparently the tests had failed to anticipate everything.

With players posting on forums that the game had disappeared after only one day, Head of Poker Communications Lee Jones made a statement on the PokerStars Discord channel:

"Earlier today we were alerted to a bug which, in some situations, caused our mobile lobby to show no games other than PokerStars Power Up when using the search and filter functions. All other games were directly accessible at all times."

He added:

"As a result, we have removed Power Up from our desktop and mobile platforms in order to ensure players continue to have a high quality experience. It is important to note that the Power Up real money experience was not impacted and performed as we had expected."

Jones, who is hopeful that PowerUp will be back up and running by next week sometime, also said:

"PokerStars takes player enjoyment very seriously and, particularly during launches of this scale, we take steps to minimise disruption of the player overall experience. We anticipate bugs of this kind at beta stage, which is why we commonly execute staggered product and service launches, as we have been doing here."


Not everyone is quite so happy about the game, former PokerStars pro Isaac ā€˜Ikeā€™ Haxton angry it exists at all venting on Twitterā€¦

As for PowerUp itself, Brad Willis described the game in the PokerStars blog as ā€œā€¦ what 2047 looks like in their [PokerStars] imagination. Poker is the same... but it's also wildly different,ā€ explaining that after choosing your own futuristic character:

"Not only will you get your cards just like you would in a normal game of poker, but you'll also have access to nine different powers that can turn the game in your favor... if you play them right."

The game is played as a Sit & Go format with three players facing off across an agreed upon buy-in stake of $1, $3, $7 or $15, and it went live at the $1 and $3 in the .EU domains, and was expected to roll out across .NET, .COM and .UK sites throughout the week, although this timeline is obviously up in the air given the technical problems.


Articles 2284

Andrew from Edinburgh, Scotland, is a professional journalist, international-titled chess master, and avid poker player.Read more

Comments

You need to be logged in to post a new comment

No Comments found.