OnLive: All employees laid off then rehired I guess

[Great Rumbler]

According to a source close to the situation, the company called an all hands meeting at 10am PDT, at which the entire staff was fired. Some staffers may be rehired as the company transitions to its next unknown iteration.

http://mashable.com/2012/08/17/onlive-layoffs/

[Joe Molotov]

Gaben, why you so mean?

[Great Rumbler]

Gaben called the hit. OnLive was starting to muscle in on his turf and he wasn't just going to sit back and let it happen.

[Great Rumbler]

I can confirm people were fired.

It sucks that people are losing their jobs here. Any word on what happened?

[Howard Alan Treesong]

"OnLive most recently announced a partnership with Ouya, the Android-based hacker friendly game console that broke records and stole hearts on Kickstarter."

[Purple Filth]

David Perry knew what was up and suckered Sony into buying his company 

Sucks to hear about lay off though (if legit)

[Purple Filth]

new info

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/08/17/onlive-denies-closure-reports.aspx

Update: Onlive has provided the following statement to Game Informer:
 
We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive's apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships. The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.'s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services.

We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until  it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive's businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.

Wth? So jettsion the undesirable debt and employees while keep the good shit for the new company.

Apparently rumors are going around that either EA or AT&T bought them and i guess something like that is close since they now have "substantial funding" now

[Great Rumbler]

Isn't that basically what Sentai Filmworks did with ADV?

[Eel O'Brian]

"You can pay us $50 to stream your game to you at medium settings, with added lag and macroblocking!"

what went wrong there

[Human Snorenado]

"OnLive most recently announced a partnership with Ouya, the Android-based hacker friendly game console that broke records and stole hearts on Kickstarter."

The wave of the future!

[Purple Filth]

Isn't that basically what Sentai Filmworks did with ADV?

Haven paid attention to that to be honest. Also sounds like what happened to Factor 5 (assets funneled back into the main company in Germany while its dies.

[Purple Filth]

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/17/source-onlive-ceo-showed-no-remorse-when-announcing-layoffs/

Our source, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Perlman "showed no remorse" when detailing the decision to staff and explained to laid-off employees that any vetted stocks were worthless – as OnLive is "nowhere near going public" – no severance would be offered, and all flexible spending accounts were gone

"You can pay us $50 to stream your game to you at medium settings, with added lag and macroblocking!"

what went wrong there

Despite its claim of two million users, our source says that the average peak amount of concurrent users was around 1,800. The two million number accounts for anyone who has signed up for the service; actual usage was remarkably lower.

 

[pilonv1]

Shocking news.

The only reason I can see someone buying them is to own the technology and prevent others from using it.

[treythemovie]

I tired Onlive once. It was a horribly barely functioning laggy experiences. The fact of the matter is, the US is far too behind on internet speed rates to have ever made ONlive a winning proposition.

[Eel O'Brian]

this is where things are headed, although it is several years (perhaps even a decade) away from becoming the norm

the tech will almost certainly be used to provide "backwards compatibility" to one or more of the future consoles

on the one hand, when it does get to the level of acceptable performance, there will be more people gaming than ever before (when you can just pair a controller with your "smart" TV and start playing instantly i'd imagine lots of folks will at least try it), so that busts the market wide open for smaller console games and riskier projects

on the other hand, it introduces a whole new set of tech problems and consumer worries

[Huff]

whats the whole legality of filing for bankruptcy and then just reopening under a new name. sounds fishy to me

[Trent Dole]

whats the whole legality of filing for bankruptcy and then just reopening under a new name. sounds fishy to me

It's not entirely legal. The aforementioned ADV/Sentai thing happened via a loophole in Texas law but they're getting sued by some folks anyway. To further be dicks they named one of their subcompanies after a loophole calling it Section 23 Films.

[Tasty]

Despite its claim of two million users, our source says that the average peak amount of concurrent users was around 1,800. The two million number accounts for anyone who has signed up for the service; actual usage was remarkably lower.

 

If each of those was paying, $90k/month isn't horrible. But if growth was stalling I can see why it wouldn't be seen well.

[Purple Filth]

Despite its claim of two million users, our source says that the average peak amount of concurrent users was around 1,800. The two million number accounts for anyone who has signed up for the service; actual usage was remarkably lower.

 

If each of those was paying, $90k/month isn't horrible. But if growth was stalling I can see why it wouldn't be seen well.

You can sign up for free (though you play demos and stuff until you either rent, buy full access to the game, or buy the play pack bundle ) so i could see someone trying it for a bit then not use it again.

[Tasty]

Possibly bought by MS.

We start cutting corners and being a bit more conservative, and then finally Sony comes to our rescue. But when they look into how our business is being run, they see it's a mess, and pass. We're basically left screwed, but then Steve approaches Microsoft and begs them to take us. They see we're on the verge of bankruptcy and tell him they only want the top-earners and "brains" behind the operation (the 1%) and that they'll pass if he doesn't "trim the fat." So that's exactly what he does.

[Great Rumbler]

Pink slips for everyone!

[Tucah]

After Sony got Gaikai, I'm not surprised MS wants a piece of the pie as well.

[naff]

Doesn't sound like it's an MS takeover, but they went through some kind of strange asset restructuring as an alternative to bankruptcy - Assignment for the benefit of creditors

On Friday, OnLive's assets were acquired by a newly created company, also called OnLive. One of the old OnLive's early investors, Lauder Partners, is the first investor in the new OnLive.

Its other investors included AT&T, HTC and Time Warner's Warner Bros. AT&T declined to comment and Warner did not immediately return a message for comment. Autodesk, another investor, also declined to discuss the development.

...about half of its staff of 200 were offered jobs at the new company and more may get offers soon.