Pivgame and Muchos Poker in legal dispute
Malta licensee accuses superaffiliate of "evident breaches of contract" - Muchos Poker claims Pivgame owes it several months worth of royalties and that its players are having difficulties cashing out their funds from the PIV cashier.
Malta-licensed operator Pivgame and multi-platform superaffiliate Muchos Poker are locked in a legal dispute after ending their working relationship this week.
Muchos, whose central cashier system allows players to play on various different networks and make P2P transfers between their various accounts on each of these networks, continues to send players to sites including 888 and iPoker skins DafaPoker and Poker770, while it is also in the process of entering the operator space by launching a skin on the Revolution Poker Network early in November
Pivgame had initially provided Muchos’ players with access to the Enet, IGT Poker, Everleaf, Merge, Revolution and Casino di Venezia networks, however IGT Poker announced plans to close earlier this year while eGaming Review understands that Muchos Poker took the decision itself to end any association with Enet and Everleaf for various reasons.
It said in a statement: “Pivgame has ended the contract with Muchos on the 29th October 2012 due to evident breaches of contract by the sub-licencee in question. Pivgame, as a holder of five Maltese Licences will take legal action in order to defend its own interest under the Maltese Judicial Authority for the actions of [Muchos].”
Muchos Poker spokesman Tim Heath told eGR that the relationship between the parties turned sour after Piv was unsuccessful in its attempts to set up a poker room of its own on 888’s software, with a representative of Piv ordering Muchos to close down its own 888 room – created with the blessing of 888 – because it represented “unfair competition.”
Heath claims that there is a backlog of money owed to Muchos by Piv, explaining: “Over the last three months we have tried to recoup what they owe us. We have been getting things ready on our side and had planned to terminate the agreement ourselves this week, but they beat us to the punch.”
“Now we’re almost glad that they terminated it because if it had been us who did it then we would have had to wait 30 days before contacting our players and legally submitting our demands for payment of outstanding commissions – now we can do so straight away,” added Heath.
A statement on the MuchosPoker.com website gives players instructions on how to theoretically recoup their money from the Pivgame sites, and says: “We are already working on the repayment of funds from Pivgame to Muchos for your player balances held under the PIV cashier now and these funds will be paid out to the player via their preferred method as soon as possible and we will update all affected players as soon as we have more information.”
Heath also noted that: “One really important point is we have no problem with our players continuing to play on Piv if they so wish, but we want to make sure those who want to withdraw their money can do so in a timely and efficient manner.”
Pivgame’s ‘Poker in Venice’ brand is currently advertised as having skins on the Everleaf, Enet, Casino di Venezia, Cake (Revolution), Onfire and iDeal poker networks.
Update: Pivgame, via its legal representatives, has released the following statement to eGaming Review:
“In order to safeguard the interests of the players, Pivgame has transferred all the player accounts, registered on Muchospoker, with their relative balances because the player accounts belong to the licencee Pivgame Ltd.
Pivgame complies with the Law for all the balances of these players and obviously cannot comply with the balances of other players that are active even on Muchospoker.com.”