After meeting with OnLive at E3, I didn’t get the vibe that they were in trouble. I was shocked at the minimal amount of people frequenting their booth. Thousands of people flooding into E3, and truthfully, it looked as if only 200 of them wanted to see what OnLive was up to. To me this technology is genius, play any game on any device that can run the application?! Excitement alone didn’t hold the company up unfortunately. Sources such as Joystiq reported that employees knew something was up. The companies traffic was low, and their subscribers were reported at about 1600.
Friday a meeting was called and all employees were informed that the company no longer existed. The company didn’t restructure or slim down, it simply ceased to exist. If employees held stock it no longer held value, and there would be no severance package for the displaced workers. The company had been purchased by unnamed investors who will keep the service active for subscribers, but no other information was given.
OnLive CEO Steve Perlman will be settling affairs under an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors. Roughly speaking the assets are assigned to a third party with goals of receiving a 1 to 1 repayment of debt from the company whether it be through sale of assets, recovery of receivables, or what sounds like liquidation of anything else.
With Gaikai being purchased by Sony, OnLive had hopes to keep kicking or to be purchased, unfortunately these hopes just weren’t met. Our hearts go out to the employees and families of OnLive.