Yahoo to pull online poker website from US market

"The old parlor games were incompatible, insecure, and no longer functioning correctly”, states Yahoo's Games Help website.
The withdrawal of Yahoo Poker free Texas Hold‘em forms part of a move that will eliminate all Classic Yahoo Parlor Games from the start of 2015. The service has been offered as a play-money venture, with no real-money games being made available.
The option to keep Yahoo Poker as play-money only allowed players from all over the US to access the service, rather than those only located in states that have legalized real-money online poker.

However, should the US legalise online gaming on a wider scale, the idea was to convert certain games to real-money services.
Despite these wider plans, Yahoo has chosen to withdraw the offering, with players visiting  Yahoo Games now being greeted with a message that reads: “As of December 31st, 2014, Yahoo Games will no longer offer  Yahoo Classic Games including Yahoo Poker, Yahoo Pool and Yahoo Bingo on web or mobile devices”.

Another statement on the Games Help page reads: “In January 2014, changes to supporting technologies and increased security requirements for our Yahoo web pages made it impossible to keep the games running.

“Following these technological advancements, the old parlor games were incompatible, insecure, and no longer functioning correctly”.
According to a report by Forbes, Yahoo Games Public Relations manager Sean Hamel said that the decision to withdraw Classic Yahoo Parlor games was an effort to “streamline our product offerings and focus our energy and resources on developing for Yahoo’s core experiences”.

The move comes after Yahoo earlier this year launched the Yahoo Games Network, a new social gaming network that serves as a platform for third-party game developers.