Cloud gaming platform OnLive to be acquired

Beijing Time August 20 news, according to foreign media reports, cloud gaming service platform OnLive in the United States August 17 began mass layoffs, and then issued an official statement confirming that the company has been acquired.

According to a number of reports received by the Wall Street Journal columnist Kara SVESHL Kara Swisher, OnLive's employees are leaving their offices in Palo Alto, Calif., and everyone carries a few packed boxes. Then they drove directly to the nearby bar to drown their sorrows.

OnLive, a cloud computing gaming service Company, held a staff meeting on the morning of August 17 in the United States, where executives announced that most of the company's staff would leave, leaving only the most basic personnel to keep the OnLive cloud server functioning. And the company's executives did not explain much more than the announcement of the company's massive layoffs.

Steve Perlman, founder and CEO of OnLive, still works on several other digital projects through his Rearden lab. Palmer's Rearden Lab is at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters.

According to sources, those who maintain OnLive cloud computing servers will have to work at least until the valuation of the OnLive cloud computing game is completed. According to Kotaku's report, OnLive has now filed for bankruptcy protection in California for the benefit of creditors.

It is not clear who the OnLive company's most valuable technology and patents will be owned. Because OnLive has previously successfully raised 56 million of billions of dollars from investors such as Maverick Capital, Time Warner and Taiwan's technology giant HTC. Before OnLive raised the money, HTC had invested $40 million in OnLive earlier in 2011. These are not a decimal. So I wonder if OnLive's founder Palmer will sell the whole company to repay the investors.

Sony recently spent 380 million of dollars to buy OnLive's rival, Gaikai, to strengthen Gaikai's cloud-computing gaming services.

It is now clear that onlive, while not responding to various reports on the company's situation, is onlive to make a massive layoff of the company as efficiently as it was to establish OnLive services early in his start-up.

U.S. time August 16, OnLive company's spokesman did not recognize these reports. "We don't respond to all kinds of rumors, and now OnLive's cloud computing gaming servers are still working," the spokeswoman said. Now the company has been to mass layoffs, onlive still do not forget their own business propaganda on two lines.

At the time of last week, Sveshl heard rumors of OnLive's massive layoffs, and in Friday she e-mailed the matter to OnLive. She did not get any useful information from her reply, as OnLive's reply was that there were now rumours of mass layoffs, and rumors of a company's takeover. The company does not comment and respond to any rumours.

Now, based on the information we have, we basically know what happened to OnLive, and we don't need any official response or comment.

OnLive launched the cloud computing game in 2010 and held the all things digital conference in the same year. OnLive's cloud-based gaming platform can run on PCs, tablets and Google's TV products. Not only that, OnLive also offers a virtual desktop based on Microsoft Office for Apple's ipad series and Google's Android Tablet PC. When OnLive launched the virtual desktop, OnLive's relationship with Microsoft had also spent a honeymoon period.

According to the latest news from the editor before press release, the cloud gaming service platform was OnLive by a third party after massive layoffs. OnLive has officially confirmed that the company was sold to "a newly established company" after the massive layoffs, but declined to disclose the company's name and source of funds, saying only that "the OnLive service will remain".

OnLive employees ' rights and interests are difficult to guarantee

OnLive is being bought, and the rights of those who have been laid off are confusing, especially the onlive stocks they hold.

Brian Jaquet, OnLive's communications director, told Forbes magazine: "We're not going to go bankrupt." ”

Many media reports today cite the dismissal of former OnLive employees, saying the company has sacked all its staff and filed a "bankruptcy petition".

Mr. Jacquitte is very strict about this matter, only "certainly not" four words to answer all the questions.

In an interview with Forbes, Jacquitte said: "Let me be clear." We're not going to go bankrupt. ”

The following is the original statement of OnLive:

We can now confirm that all the assets of OnLive have been acquired by a company with sufficient funds. The company will continue to operate OnLive gaming and desktop Services, continue to support all OnLive applications and equipment, and continue to maintain our partnership in gaming, productivity tools and enterprise-class services. The new company will hire many OnLive existing staff from various departments and plan to continue recruiting more employees in the future. All products and services previously released, whether or not officially marketed, will continue to operate without any impact.

The worst injury is the 150 to 200 former OnLive employees who have recently been laid off.

In fact, as early as August 17 in the United States time, on Twitter and some technology sites have onlive to mass layoffs. For this reason, OnLive, an old friend of the company, and a onlive of the company's game design and release, Kevin Dunt (Kevin Dent) personally called his friends at work OnLive to ask if the rumours were true. Dent is chief executive of Tiswaz Entertainment company. In the morning of 17th, Dent's friend gave him the answer that everything is fine now, they have not been fired by the company, the business is the same as before. But at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Dent received a call from a friend who was a coder at OnLive, when the phone was roughly: I don't know if I was fired by the company. According to a meeting of executives in the morning, we seem to have been cut off and some of the staff will be recruited back.

Based on rumours that Dent had seen before about OnLive's massive layoffs, combined with a phone call from the former OnLive coder, Dent realised that those attending the meeting had apparently been cut off by OnLive. Shortly after receiving the call, Dent received a call from former OnLive market development staff, saying OnLive had just canceled the entire market development department.

And for the rest of the day, Dent has been in contact with those who worked in OnLive, and they have been told that their jobs are no longer there. They have also received similar news that one person will be hired back after a layoff and then join the business unit of the company's new investor, a department that looks set to be named OnLive 2. But it is not clear who will be returned and which part will be completely cut off. By communicating with these onlive former employees, Dent realized that those who had worked in the cloud streaming media service were unaware of the information.

Employees who had worked in OnLive told Dent that OnLive's IP would be owned by the new company, but they were unsure whether that meant that the OnLive shares they held were also transferred to the new company. These employees believe that although OnLive's IP has been transferred to the new company, their shares should remain in OnLive. What makes these employees feel bad is that OnLive should be filing for bankruptcy protection. Dent was particularly unhappy to tell the employees that if their stocks were onlive, once OnLive declared bankruptcy, their stock was a pile of waste paper.

Dent that in order to ensure that the shares of the retrenched staff could be transferred to the new company, new investors would have to agree to sell some of their shares at a price of $0 to those who hold OnLive shares.

It is far more complicated than that, and now dent found that OnLive's most valuable technology patents were not in the company's name, but in the Perlman laboratory of Steve Palmer, Steve Rearden, founder and chief executive officer of OnLive. And OnLive IP is also registered in the Rearden laboratory name. By moving OnLive's IP to a new company, Palmer is essentially able to combine new investor innovations to start onlive the company's business. So Palmer does not need to buy the shares of those employees. And if the employee is hired back to the new company, he will enjoy the same stock and earnings as before in OnLive. These problems are particularly tricky and are closely watched by employees.

Dent believes other investors, such as BT, At&t and Intel, have now onlive their investments. According to Dent from a founder investor, OnLive once gave these investors two choices, either to take back the investment directly or to keep the investment, but once OnLive filed for bankruptcy and the court approved the OnLive bankruptcy petition, These investors can only accept losses. So these investors have opted to recoup their investment.

Dent that OnLive's current financial situation is not so bad that he has to file for bankruptcy. So it is possible for OnLive to choose the transfer that is advantageous to the creditor's interests. This is also the best choice for a bankruptcy. Transfers of interest to creditors allow the direct transfer of these unresolved operations to the new company. Based on the current onlive of mass layoffs, OnLive is likely to have done so. Before that, OnLive would have received more than 9 digits from Sony and HP, but OnLive refused.

Palmer is abandoning OnLive's existing investors, and he has abandoned all employees in OnLive. Even if some of the employees are being recruited back into the new company, their stock and earnings are not the same as they used to be. Therefore, dent that onlive in the future, whether it is with the game developers, publishers or the cooperation with investors will encounter difficulties. Because OnLive has done so many companies and onlive cooperation will have concerns.

Dent that Palmer seriously underestimated the negative impact of this, and that OnLive's news release was particularly bad, the worst company Dent ever seen in the world.

Dent that in these 6 months, there has been a variety of rumors about OnLive, and onlive the outside world has always said that everything is normal. Even if the telephone to verify, the answer is still all normal. And after the 17th layoffs, their response remains normal. It's really hard to accept.

And now the hardest thing to do is to get rid of OnLive employees who have to think about how to use the law to protect their rights.