OnLive is dead, All Hail OnLive
Following yesterday’s news that cloud gaming company OnLive had gone into some sort of bankruptcy, a press release was sent out today to announce some good news.
That good news states that following the “Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors”, the assignee of the company’s assets sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual property, etc.) to a newly formed company which apparently will operate as… OnLive.
The OnLive® Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption and all customer purchases will remain intact; users are not expected to notice any change whatsoever. OnLive’s current initiatives will continue as well, with major announcements of new products and services planned in the coming weeks and months.
The first investor in the new company is apparently an affiliate of Lauder Partners and as more investors are found, OnLive expects to be hiring additional staff. About half of OnLive’s original staff were given employment offers by the new company at their current salaries immediately upon the transfer, and the non-hired staff will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company.
Meanwhile, Techcrunch is running the rumour that the assignment for the benefit of creditors was done in order to reduce the company’s liability, effectively reducing employee equity to zero. OnLive’s own press release suggests this may indeed have been at least one of the reasons:
Unfortunately neither OnLive, Inc. shares nor OnLive staff could transfer under this type of transaction
Indeed an easy way to get rid of shareholders, especially if those shareholders are your own employees…
Ascension: Kratos won’t be a sociopath
UK Charts: Sleeping Dogs wide awake