Platform migration

What leaving a platform actually involves — balances, data, notice and cutover — and the questions worth asking before you sign anywhere, including here.

Start with your exit, not your entry

Your exit terms are agreed at signing and discovered at leaving. Nobody negotiating a new platform is thinking about the end of it, which is exactly why the terms that decide whether you can ever leave get skimmed. The questions below are worth asking before you sign anywhere, including here.

Every vendor writing about migration is trying to win the switch, which is why almost none of them describes what leaving them would involve. That is the section further down this page.

What you are trying to move

Six things, and they do not behave alike. Two move cleanly, three move with conditions attached, and one does not move at all.

  • Player recordsUsually the platform holds them; the operator owns them. Portable means a complete extract in a format somebody can read without the platform that wrote it.
  • Balances in both currenciesThe platform holds them. What they are worth is the operator's decision. Portable is the wrong word here. A balance is a liability, and moving one means somebody has decided what it becomes.
  • Transaction historyThe platform holds it, and it is usually the bulk of what has to move. Portable means far enough back to answer a dispute or a regulator, not far enough back to look complete.
  • Redemption recordsThe platform holds them; the obligation to keep them is the operator's. These are the records somebody asks for when there is a problem. An extract that drops them is not an extract.
  • Verification evidenceThe operator's own, wherever it was performed. It moves if the underlying records move. A status with nothing behind it is not evidence.
  • Lobby, offer and state configurationPlatform-side, on any platform. This does not move. It gets rebuilt, and the honest plan budgets for that rather than hoping.

Player balances are the hard part

Two balances, two different characters, and only one of them is arithmetic.

  • A Gold Coin balance has no cash value, which makes it a product decision: whatever you grant on the new platform is what a player has.
  • A redeemable balance is not that. It is an obligation to a player, and it does not stop being one because the system underneath it changed.
  • Whatever moves, somebody has decided what a balance is worth in the new system — and that decision is visible to every player who logs in on the first morning.

The operator decides what a balance is worth in the new system and hands us the numbers. We load what we are given; there is no arithmetic of ours in the middle. That is not us declining the work — it is that the decision is a commercial one about your own players, and a supplier who made it for you would be making it wrongly.

Questions for your current supplier

Eight, in the order they usually matter. None of them is hostile and all of them are easier to ask now than at the point you need the answers.

Questions for your current supplier

Ask them before you need the answers. Ask them of anywhere you are thinking of going, too.

  1. What exactly can I export, in what format, and how far back does it go?
  2. What is the notice period, and where is it written?
  3. What happens to redemptions that are in flight on the last day?
  4. Does verification status transfer, or does every player start again?
  5. What happens to player balances during the move?
  6. Who owns the front end if we part?
  7. Who is reachable when something breaks during the move?
  8. What actually happens on the last day, and is there a period where both platforms are live?

Our answers to the same questions

A page about leaving that says nothing about leaving us is the thing it is criticising. So the same eight, answered — including the two we have not settled, which say so rather than being quietly dropped.

Our answers to the same questions

6 of 8 are settled. The other two say so.

  1. What exactly can I export, in what format, and how far back does it go?Accounts, balances, transaction history and redemption records come with you. Lobby, offer and per-state configuration is platform-side and gets rebuilt rather than moved — we would rather say that than let it be discovered in the last week.
  2. What is the notice period, and where is it written?Defined rather than open-ended, and written into the MSA. We publish that it exists rather than the figure, because the figure is a term you are agreeing to — ask for it on the first call and have it before you sign, not after.
  3. What happens to redemptions that are in flight on the last day?Not settled — worth asking us on a call.A good question and one we have not settled in writing. Put it to us on a call, and put it to whoever you are leaving — the answer tells you a great deal about both.
  4. Does verification status transfer, or does every player start again?It can carry across when the underlying records come with it. The check is yours on both routes rather than something we issue, so what moves is your own evidence — which is also why nobody can promise you it will be accepted somewhere else.
  5. What happens to player balances during the move?You decide what a balance is worth in the new system and hand us the numbers. We load what we are given. There is no arithmetic of ours in the middle, and there should not be — it is your liability and your players.
  6. Who owns the front end if we part?Where we built it, the code is licensed to you for the life of the engagement rather than assigned. A source handover can be agreed; it is a separate negotiation and it is not free. We publish that because silence on it reads as a worse answer than the true one.
  7. Who is reachable when something breaks during the move?A person, on a defined incident-response commitment rather than a queue. That is one of four commitments we made publicly before this page existed, which is the only reason it is worth anything here.
  8. What actually happens on the last day, and is there a period where both platforms are live?Not settled — worth asking us on a call.Not settled as a standing answer, because the shape depends on what is moving. It is agreed per operator before anything starts, and it is the part to agree first rather than last.

How a cutover runs

What a cutover requires. Not what ours looks like, because we have not run one. One operator has come to us from another provider and started fresh — new accounts, new balances, nothing carried across. That is an onboarding, not a migration, and calling it one would be the kind of claim this site removes from other people's pages.

What follows is the sequence a cutover requires, which is a different claim and a checkable one. The specifics are agreed per operator before anything starts.

  • Agree the export before anything else: what is in it, what format it arrives in, and who confirms it is complete.
  • Decide what a balance becomes. This is the decision the whole move waits on and it is not a technical one.
  • Load into a non-production environment first and reconcile against the export, line for line, while there is still time for the answer to be wrong.
  • Rehearse. A move that has been done once on a copy is a different thing from a move that has been planned.
  • Run the window with the old platform read-only, so there is exactly one place a balance can change.
  • Support the first week properly. The problems arrive when players do, not when the data does.

If you want the two unsettled answers settled for your situation, the fastest route is a call — book one and bring your current contract.

When not to migrate

Four situations where the answer is wait. A page that never says not now is a sales page with headings.

  • Mid-launch. Two changes in flight means neither has anybody's full attention, and the one that breaks will be the one nobody was watching.
  • Mid-underwriting. A move during an acquiring conversation gives the underwriter a moving target and gives you a worse answer.
  • With a state change pending. Wait for the position to settle, then move against a picture that will still be true next month.
  • Before you have read your exit terms. If the answer to what leaving involves is unknown, that is the work — not the migration plan.

Reviewed . Corrections are made visibly rather than silently.

Everything on this page about our own terms is either confirmed or marked as unsettled. If you want the unsettled two answered for your situation, ask us directly — that is a shorter conversation than it sounds.