[NewGuy]

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isn't it possible that there were signifigantly more than 10,000 quarterfinal seats? some people could have as many as 60 or 70 of them if they played enough monster tables, i know people that had 20 or 30

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I don't think it's very likely, but it is possible. For Party's claim that they paid out the full $14.4M of the Grand Final (on their website where you can convert seats into cash and also in their emails), there would have had to be 90,000 weekly seats outstanding.

$1,800 x 1,000 Grand Final seats = $1.8 M
$350 x (18,000 from 9 Weeky rounds - 7,700 used in 1st monthy) Grand Final seats = ~$3.6 M
$100 x Weekly seats woud have to be $9 M -> 90,000 seats

Party could have come forth publicly and openly stated that:
1) There were 40,000 Weekly seats outstanding
2) "We have made a business decision to withdraw 100% (or 80%) the $5M in seed money from the guaranteed prize pool, as well as cancelling the 23 guaranteed $100k weekly and 7 $1 Million monthly prize pools. While we regret this decision to pull out money from a guaranteed prize pool promotion, we feel this is warranted due to the UIGEA causing us to lose 80% of our market for the Monster promotion."

Were they to publicly come out with a similar statement, I for one would be disappointed, but at least reasonably assured that Party at least did not improperly keep money taken from and belonging to poker players.

Some of my biggest issues with Party handling of this payout at this point are:
1) they are being extremely disingenous in claiming that they paid out the full promised prize pool
2) they are stonewalling on the hard #s that would provide data to show they did not profit from / take extra money from the Monster rake / guaranteed prize pool
3) they are insulting our intelligence with the ridiculous assertion that it is "fair" to divide the $14.4M Final prize pool by 8,000 seats when only 1,000 actual and perhaps an EV of 1,000-1,500 additional Final seats have been won.
4) They did not automatically give players the cash, so I'm sure a good # of seats will never be converted, allowing Party to keep a good amount of cash from those players who failed to check the website expaining how to do the conversion.

This is often the case with Party- they managed to irritate customers and cause a good share of them to feel shorted, even while spending their marketing dollars on promotions that should and could have won them customer appreciation and loyalty.

A great example - their purely random VIP points for cash promos. Just like with the Monster seats, everyone in VIP was in effect getting "free money" or an overlay on their play. But by miscommunicating, handling inquiries poorly and treating people inequitably by randomly giving some customers much more value than others, they managed to alienate a good share of the VIPs getting "free money".

It's shocking how badly Party right up until the very end squandered their marketing budget / promotion $s, giving away money but still managing to disappoint a large portion of the very people receiving that money through incompetence, poor customer support, and truly horrendous communication.

Bottom line: they've provided ZERO evidence / no reasonable explanation as to why they paid out ~$6 - $7 Million of a heavily promoted and advertised $14.4 Million "Guaranteed" prize pool.