On January 22, we published our article announcing phase 2 of the Marketplace & POD beta. At the time, we believed we would be able to meet our commitment and hoped to announce the launch of this second phase soon enough. Unfortunately, we are not currently able to open access within the timeframe we had planned.

Instead, we will take the time in this article to explain in detail where we stand, the reasons for this delay, and how things will unfold in the coming weeks.

At the end of January, following the conclusion of the first phase of the beta, we collected thousands of data points—around 20,000 log entries in total—records of what happens with each action on the site. Analyzing these logs took a considerable amount of time, which we had underestimated.

Each log entry represents a snapshot of an action on the site, particularly transactions. Sometimes these transactions occur between players when you sell cards to each other, sometimes with us when you add funds to your account for example, and sometimes with our external partners (e.g., adding funds involves transferring money through our payment partner before it returns and appears in your Altered account).

With all these transactions, especially financial ones, within an ecosystem as complex as the one we are implementing, there is always a possibility of error. This is even more true when these transactions follow strict rules that vary from country to country and from one case to another. A Canadian player paying with a U.S. dollar account is a different case from a Canadian player paying in Canadian dollars, for instance.

The interconnection of various systems (taxes, payment systems, currency conversions, wallet-to-wallet transfers, etc.) resulted in approximately 600 error logs out of the 20,000 mentioned, representing 3%.

At first glance, a 3% error rate might seem relatively low, and one could consider launching the platform as is. However, we are dealing with real money—your money—that you entrust to us, and we are responsible for returning it to you down to the last cent. This money is used for your purchases, Print-on-demand orders, and even transfers to your personal account.

Launching the platform in its current state would mean accepting 3% errors not just on 20,000 transactions but on hundreds of thousands. Moreover, we would need to manage after-sales support for every single issue—correcting errors, compensating affected users, and tracking the cascading effects of these errors (if a user is mistakenly credited with an extra 100 € for instance, and spends it on cards, sellers will receive money the user didn’t actually have, creating a chain of financial discrepancies).

For these reasons, we decided to take the necessary time to thoroughly analyze the logs and reduce this percentage as close to zero as possible.

Once these 600 errors were identified, the next step was to analyze them one by one to determine whether they all stemmed from a single common issue (meaning fixing that issue would resolve all 600 errors at once) or if they were caused by multiple different problems. In our case, it was the latter. The number of specific scenarios that needed to be addressed turned out to be greater than we initially expected. As a result, by the time we completed this analysis, understood the root causes, and established a resolution timeline, we arrived at where we are today.

On a positive note, the functional part of the site (what we call User Experience) performed quite well overall. Some bugs and inconsistencies were reported, but they have already been fixed. Now, the only remaining task is to finalize updates to the back office side of the system (the behind-the-scenes mechanics that you don’t see on the site) before we can move forward to the next phase.

The phase 2 of the beta is coming (with a bit of delay, admittedly)!

The schedule is as follows:

• Wednesday, February 26: closed beta (internal, Equinox only)

• Analysis & fixes

• Friday, March 7: AMA at 6 PM CET, where we will provide all the details and ideally announce the launch date of Beta phase 2.

• As a reminder, the second phase of the beta will be handled in waves and will aim to ensure the scalability of the project, test server robustness, and validate the final step before the official launch.

We are therefore not providing a new definitive date just yet, but we will get back to you very soon!

Note: On this topic, an AMA is already scheduled for Wednesday, February 19, at 6 PM CET, focusing on Organized Play and the Season Patch. However, we will also take the opportunity to answer any questions you may have about the beta if you’d like. We look forward to seeing many of you there, ready and curious!