I think that the real shame was that it wasn't possible to use both. Ie, a windows client for you all who use that stuff, but mavens or old seals android or whatever it was for the rest of us. I know I stil haven't been able to find a regular bigcoin poker game in 2015 because of this.
Yeah, I agree that it sucks they weren't able to do that.
I think the original plan was just what you said... they wanted to continue running the old SealsWithClubs as a separate site while they built, tested and launched SwC Poker. And then when SwC was fully ready to stand on it's own, with all the platforms built, they'd be able to retire Mavens and move everyone to SwC.
Maybe they should have continued running the mavens software then. The shift has lost them a lot of customers and people who used to play on the site. Even I thought their plan was to launch the new software, roll it out for testing, and when they had the html and windowns client, they would release it.
Launching it before, definitely costed them a lot.