In mid-May, PokerStars absorbed Full Tilt’s liquidity, ending the checkered existence of the once high-flying poker room, leaving behind just the carcass of the Full Tilt brand. On Friday, eGaming Review reported that Amaya, owner of PokerStars and Full Tilt, was eliminating “dozens” of jobs in its London office, the assumption being that these positions were related to Full Tilt operations.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. When two similar operations merge, there are bound to be employee casualties because of job redundancy. That was especially the case here, since Full Tilt’s poker software wasn’t going to be used anymore; Full Tilt is now just a skin of PokerStars, using the PokerStars platform.
When the “merger” of PokerStars and Full Tilt was initially announced in February, Amaya said:
This platform migration will allow Amaya’s development and technology teams to focus on improving one market-leading platform rather than two, leading to a better gaming experience for all; improvements and features will be delivered faster and more efficiently rather than doubling development requirements. For instance, rather than splitting resources developing Full Tilt Jackpot Sit & Go and PokerStars Spin & Go features independently, teams will be able to work together on delivering the best possible product on one platform.
Eric Hollreiser, Vice President of Corporate Communications for Amaya Inc. and PokerStars, acknowledged that the job cuts were, in fact, happening, saying that they would be balanced out by “a few dozen new roles in several offices.”
He added that the company was making efforts to place employees whose jobs were eliminated in other roles within the company – perhaps at other offices – in order to avoid laying them off altogether.
Related, Joss Wood at OnlinePokerReport.com made an interesting observation on the decision of Amaya to keep the Full Tilt brand intact, even though the poker room as we knew it was eliminated. As readers will remember, and as Wood reminds us, not long after Rational Group brought Full Tilt back from the dead, the company made it so that players could transfer money between their own accounts on PokerStars and Full Tilt. The resulting information that Rational (and eventually Amaya) was able to gather on how many players remained active on both sites, how many moved money one way or the other, how many closed one account, etc., was likely quite useful when the decision was being made on how whether to shut Full Tilt down completely or keep it alive as a skin of PokerStars.
That the Full Tilt brand still exists, says Wood, is evidence that enough players were brand loyal that Amaya did not want to get rid of Full Tilt altogether. Keeping it as just skin, though, still allowed the company to enjoy the cost savings made possible by folding Full Tilt’s liquidity into PokerStars’.
