Full Tilt gets green light for eSports launch

Full Tilt Poker will launch on the Steam gaming platform before the end of the year following a successful trial period as the operator targets the 125 million eSports players who use the platform.

As reported in October, Full Tilt submitted its free-to-play client to Steam’s Greenlight process last month, where users voted to decide whether to make it a permanent addition.

Now the firm has said it received thousands of votes during the process, meaning a full launch on Steam should go live by the end of the year.

“We will be the first major online poker brand on the platform and the move underlines our strategic intentions to explore new avenues for our games,” Full Tilt’s managing director Dominic Mansour said.

“This is just one of a number of steps that we’re taking to find new audiences and we are excited about the opportunities that we’ll uncover as a result,” he added.

Mansour also said the process had provided Full Tilt with “some excellent insights into the wider gaming community” and that it had underlined the firm’s “commitment to bring the game we love to a wider player base”.

Steam has become the go-to distribution platform for gamers, with more than 125 million active users who buy, download and play popular eSports games through the software including Dota 2.

While many operators have begun offering betting markets on eSports tournaments, Amaya is understood to see the potential of converting traditional gamers into poker players.

eSports streaming website Twitch, which was acquired by Amazon for $970m last year, has seen massive growth on its poker channel in recent weeks.

Several of the most popular streamers, who broadcast themselves playing tournaments with a short delay to ensure opponents cannot see their hole cards, have links to Amaya brands and most of the play takes place on PokerStars.