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Tag: OnLive Desktop

  • OnLive Debt Revealed to be $30-40 Million

    OnLive Debt Revealed to be $30-40 Million

    The OnLive reorganization and layoffs last week were bizarre. The company issued no official statements at the time of the incident, leaving it to Twitter to break the story and allowing confusion and seemingly conflicting reports to spread. What actually happened is, perhaps even more strange than the rumors first suggested.

    What happened, in short, is that OnLive filed for ABC bankruptcy, which gave the company some protection from its debtors and investors. It then laid off its entire staff and transferred its assets to a new company (also named OnLive) through an intermediary. This left investors in the old OnLive, including HTC, holding the bag.

    The reason for the restructuring remained a mystery until yesterday, as the company was widely believed to have been solvent. The San Jose Mercury News managed to get an interview with the intermediaries to the transaction, and it turns out that OnLive was in severe debt. Joel Weinberg, CEO of Insolvency Services Group (ISG) told the Mercury News that the company owed $30-40$ million to creditors.

    Weinberg stated that OnLive was in “dire straits” and only days away from going under when the insolvency process commenced last Friday. ISG transferred OnLive’s assets to the new OnLive, which was funded by the Lauder Partners, a venture capitalist company. Weinberg told the Mercury News that he only expects to be able to pay the old OnLIve’s creditors 5 or 10 cents per dollar of OnLive debt owed.

  • OnLive Re-formed as Half Its Staff is Re-hired

    Just before the weekend began last Friday, rumors about OnLive began to leak out over Twitter. The convoluted story gleaned from OnLive employees was that the company was entering bankruptcy and that its entire staff had been laid off. The only thing OnLive would say about the turmoil inside the company was that the OnLive service would be continuing.

    It turns out that the real explanation for Friday’s events is more complicated than anyone imagined.

    Today OnLive finally issued a statement on the matter, saying the company has transferred its assets to a newly formed company that is also named OnLive. The company’s game and desktop services will continue to operate as normal, and customers will retain all of their purchases. Venture capital firm Lauder Partners has invested heavily in the new OnLive. The company seems completely undeterred by its over-the-weekend restructuring. In fact, the company stated it has several product and service announcements coming in the next few weeks.

    What happened is that OnLive’s board of directors filed for Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC), something close to bankruptcy, but where debt collectors are left in the dust. OnLive transferred its assets to a third-party holding company, which then transferred those assets to the new OnLive. This process left the original OnLive’s investors, including, no doubt, many OnLive employees, with worthless stock.

    The conflicting rumors flying around on Friday afternoon turned out to all be true, in a way. Though the original OnLive is shutting down and did lay off its entire staff, the new OnLive re-hired around half of those employees at their current salaries. The other half were offered “consulting” work in exchange for stock options with the new OnLive. OnLive stated that it plans to hire more staff when it secures additional funding. According to an official statement, “most” OnLive executives are receiving reduced compensation to allow more employees to be hired, and CEO Steve Perlman did not receive any compensation for the transaction.

  • OnLive Reported to Have Laid Off its Entire Staff [Rumor]

    [UPDATE]
    Gamasutra is confirming that all OnLive employees have been laid off.

    [ORIGINAL]
    Today OnLive, the company that offers cloud-based, streaming gaming, was reported to have fired its entire staff. The company has denied that the OnLive service is shutting down, but confusion continues to swirl about whether employees were let go. Word of the layoffs first came from industry insider Brian Fargo, founder of inXile Entertainment:

    Fargo has since provided the text of the email he received:

    I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist. Unfortunately, my job and everyone else’s was included. A new company will be formed and the management of the company will be in contact with you about the current initiatives in place, including the titles that will remain on the service.

    It has been an absolute pleasure working with you and I’m sure our path with cross again.

    Minutes later, Fargo fired off the following tweets:

    Mashable, citing an unnamed source, reported that an all-hands meeting at 10 am Pacific time resulted in the layoff of the company’s entire staff. Its source also stated that some of the employees may be rehired once the new company is formed. An update to Mashable’s report quotes OnLive Director of Corporate Communications Brian Jaquet as saying “no comment,” but emphasizing that the OnLive service will not be shutting down.

    The OnLive service is a solid platform and the company appeared to be doing well. It even released a number of new features this year, including streaming Windows 7 to iPads. In fact, rumors of layoffs don’t seem to have deterred OnLive’s public relations company from advertising the service’s latest offerings. The official OnLive Twitter account just sent out the following tweet:

    What exactly is happening at OnLive is still unknown. Though the company has issued carefully-worded statements that the OnLive service will not be shutting down, it has not commented on possible layoffs or made an official statement. Kevin Dent, CEO of Tiswaz Entertainment chimed in on Twitter and summed up the confusion felt throughout the industry:

    The Perlman Dent refers to is Steve Perlman, founder and CEO of OnLive.

    Updates to this story will follow as more information becomes available.

  • OnLive Adjusts Service To Meet Microsoft Licensing Rules

    OnLive has changed its popular OnLive Desktop service to bring it into compliance with Microsoft’s licensing rules. OnLive Desktop is now powered by Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 instead of Windows 7.

    OnLive Desktop allows users to connect their iPad or Android tablet to OnLive’s servers in order to run a virtual Window 7 desktop, complete with Microsoft Office and Adobe Flash. The service has been popular with users, but drew Microsoft’s ire. It seems that OnLive Desktop fell afoul of Microsoft’s complicated licensing rules. Not long after OnLive Desktop launched, Microsoft said that OnLive Desktop’s service was violating its rules, but that they were “actively engaged with OnLive with the hope of bringing them into a properly licensed scenario.”

    This scenario, it seems, consisted of OnLive offering the same basic service with a slightly different version of Windows. Without making any announcements, OnLive made the switch from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 sometime over the weekend. Also, all references to Windows 7 have been removed from the OnLive website’s descriptions of OnLive Desktop.

    The user experience appears to have changed little with the switch. OnLive Desktop still offers users the same range of tools they had before, just in a slightly different package. The OnLive Desktop App is available on the iOS App Store and on Google Play for free. OnLive Desktop offers two plans for users: the free plan provides access to Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader, while the Plus plan (which costs $4.99 per month) adds Flash, cloud storage access, web mail attachments, and faster speeds.

    OnLive Desktop users, have you noticed a difference with the switch to Windows Server? Is OnLive Desktop better, worse, or the same as before? Let us know in the comments.

    [H/T: Cult of Mac]