OnLive Lives on as a New Company While Holding on to its Roots

OnLive was in rough shape last week. Financially, OnLive was at a low spot and it was hard to see where the company would be a few years down the road, or if there would be a company at all. The cloud-gaming service that brought AAA games to your home computer was threatened.

Today, OnLive has secured a new future in a brand new company. What does that mean for you? An affiliate of Lauder Partners LLC has acquired OnLive but the changes that happen will happen behind the scenes rather than the business that was originally created so that the streaming won’t stop. While OnLive didn’t exactly take off like the founders had hoped, it still had a following and enough support to keep them going.

OnLive, Inc.’s board of directors, faced with difficult financial decisions for OnLive, Inc., determined that the best course of action was a restructuring under an “Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.”  The assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual property, etc.) to the new company. Unfortunately neither OnLive, Inc. shares nor OnLive staff could transfer under this type of transaction, but almost half of OnLive’s 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. Upon closing additional funding, the company plans to hire more staff, both former OnLive employees as well as new employees.

The OnLive Service has been in operation 24/7 without interruption since its launch over two years ago, and is expected to continue to operate smoothly under the new company. All games, products and services remain available, and the company has new product and partnership announcements on the way.

It’s also important to note that OnLive will be on the upcoming OUYA, an Android-based console coming out soon. This partnership strengthens the prospects of the new console by ten fold and certainly got my interest in the project.

Stay tuned to Velocity Gamer for more news regarding the OnLive service.