These down times are often said to be in order to carry out back end maintenance.
Personally, I think we'd all be much happier if the entire WGT staff, especially the useless programmers, did just that and all went and got enemas for 5 or 6 hours instead of bolloxing up the game.
If it ain't broke, leave the fecking thing alone. The grid was just fine how it was. Now it's broken. Hello? A lab rat learns to stop pressing the red button when it gets an electric shock every time, how come WGT programmers ain't that smart?