Hellcatraz

What is Hellcatraz?

“For all of our customers, it’s been and will continue to be business as usual,” Wilson says.

The wider opportunity is to reduce some of the fragmentation operators face. Splash Tech’s jackpots and free-to-play products complement RubyPlay’s free spins, rewards, missions and tournaments, while remaining capable of supporting third-party content rather than being fenced inside a single studio’s games.

What changes is the support behind that business. Wilson says Splash Tech is moving from the resources of a 20-person company to those of a group of around 300, adding depth across licensing, compliance, finance, technology, product and business intelligence. In his characteristically understated phrasing, each area has had “rocket fuel injected into it”.

What is Hellcatraz?

The only market to report a loss for B2B during the period was the UK, down 8% to €59 million. Playtech said the market was impacted by “certain customer-specific changes and increased Remote Gaming Duty”.

Europe, excluding the UK, grew 2%. Overall, regulated revenue for B2B accounted for 83% of overall revenue across the segment, marking 21% growth, compared to unregulated.

Speaking during the follow-up analyst call, Playtech CEO Mor Weizer said regulated revenue would continue to grow, although the company would “continue to support those markets that we believe over time will become regulated”.

What is Hellcatraz?

Since then, it has evolved into something broader: a different development pipeline, a different role for developers and quality assurance (QA), a different way of organising teams and, increasingly, a different relationship with customers.

Cubeia’s first phase was an open approach to AI. Developers could use it whenever they wanted. Phase two brought structure, with everyone using the same agents and working through the same AI-driven pipeline. That required Cubeia to solve questions around quality, reliability and how agents could work together, while getting employees comfortable with the new way of working. Grenstad believes that work has largely been completed.

“During the hybrid period in Q1, Cubeia solved 259 issues. Once it moved to the AI-driven process, that figure rose to 421 – a 62% increase. Larger projects increased from 17 to 58. So the answer is yes: moving to AI-driven development has increased our output tremendously,” Grenstad says.