Reports: OnLive fires all staff, service’s future unclear | Hacker News Reader

Reports: OnLive fires all staff, service’s future unclear

arstechnica.com

83 pointsshawndumas36 comments

> 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

I hate that companies are allowed to do that. Sunrocket did that to me and basically stole around $150 worth of unused service. The new company apparently had no legal obligation to me.

It should be illegal to sell assets without also selling the debts/obligations together with them.

I liked the idea of OnLive. In fact since I've been travelling a lot over the past year I wanted to play some games that I couldn't (because my laptop sucks). The problem I found is that it is just too expensive to play the games I wanted. They cost the same amount as purchasing a physical copy. I couldn't justify that as it provides a degraded experience and I know when I come home I have a great computer I can play them on.

It's too bad they couldn't make it work since I the concept was pretty cool.

Also their selection of games was really poor.

Except for "Orcs Must Die", which is the title that got me to sign up to OnLive! I really enjoy the service.

This was exactly my reaction. I thought I was signing up for a Netflix style service, but instead I was getting a membership to a game store that I had to pay for.

They're filing for ABC protection in California. Source: http://kotaku.com/5935767/onlive-filing-for-bankruptcy-new-c... Here's an explanation of what ABC is http://allmandlaw.com/bankruptcy/abc-vs-bankruptcy Looks like they're re-arranging OnLive into a new company http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2012/08/17/onlive...

I wonder how this is going to affect Ouya, who just raised over 8M on kickstarter, and who was relying on Onlive to provide access to AAA titles from day 1.

> Some of those employees may reportedly be hired back as the company transitions into a new iteration, which might be more focused on exercising its portfolio of streaming patents.

This doesn't sound good.

OnLive spent a ridiculous amount of time getting their technology to where it is today (9 years!), at which point it looks like they failed to license titles that anyone wanted to play. If there was a legitimate reason for the patent system it would be to protect all of their hard work. I'm hoping that "exercising" means licensing to other companies like Apple or Microsoft instead of just turning into a patent troll. It was pretty impressive how OnLive could stream real time graphics better from a datacenter to my TV than my laptop could over airplay, i.e. something that a lot of technologies could benefit from.

Software copyrights would cover whatever they may have invented just fine, there's no need for an overbroad patent system to shut down the entire idea of application streaming for the next 20 years.

I think it would be great if they licensed their technology to a company that can leverage it. Fingers crossed that Apple does something with this.

This doesn't mean that they're becoming an evil patent troll.

Apple is the company you'd choose to take over this technology? I'd vote Valve.

I think and really hope it's Google. Onlive is a threat to Apple's walled garden model. Apple might just want to shut it down.

I doubt Google would dick over the employees like this. Even the extraneous Motorola employees they didn't want to acquire got to stay on through the whole acquisition plus a year's severance.

Ah man- I played with OnLive a little bit and it seemed like a product that had so much potential to revolutionize the industry. Maybe it was ahead of its time?

Need.... Google... Fiber...

We really just need more mature LTE networks. I've seen LTE pings around 40. If they can get that down under 25 consistently that's pretty much all you need to move the gaming world to thin clients.

One of the major reasons why OnLive struggled (and now failed) is because they launched their platform (20010) well after the launch of the XBox 360 (2005) and PS3 (2006).

Serious gamers, the early adopter market for OnLive, already had purchased an XBox 360 and/or PS3. Since OnLive, as far as I can tell, didn't have any compelling, exclusive titles, and provided a gaming experience that was inferior to alternatives, there was no reason for a serious gamer with a console to try (or switch to) this new platform.

OnLive needed to launch around the same time as the other consoles and deliver a superior experience, or an equivalent experience but at a lower price point (upfront and over time).

The fallacy here is that only serious gamers play on consoles. PC gaming is back on the upswing, and one could argue that PC gamers are just as serious or even more so than console gamers.

The thing that OnLive offered was a way to play high quality AAA game titles on basically any device that has a internet connection and can play video. Where they failed I think was the pricing model, prices were too close to retail products, and it was an ala carte service. If the moved to a subscription based model similar to gamefly I think they could have had more success.

OnLive is the ideal service for cpu/gpu games, and works great against cheaters in multiplayer games (No more transparent or wireframe walls, boxes around enemy players, and other tricks)

but then most social/casual games are not cpu/gpu hungry....

I really want technology like OnLive to succeed... There is Gaikai too

I don't. OnLive is the ultimate DRM; abusive stuff like Securom can be bypassed, but with this tech any game can be killed without recourse. While I feel sympathy for the fired people, I'm also somewhat relieved that this was further delayed.

It's the ultimate copy-protection without DRM - e.g. without crappy kernel drivers sitting and trying to protect you from stealing something from your own machine.

But not only that, it protects you from doing stupid things like cheating in an multi-player game, and it's available everywhere if there is a good connection.

Oh, and it's updated with the latest HW.

It's also more energy efficient, you no longer need massive HW in your room to power your game. And the folks that run the similar HW in their server room, would surely know better than the general game customer how to make it more green efficient, and reuse the resource better.

So it could've been a great win. I could've (if Wi-fi allowed) played on my iPad games, that are still not possible to play there, without any download, install, updates, etc.

Sure, but that's all irrelevant when you lose access to all your games. Like when the company goes bankrupt.

If you bought a copy of the game and then you could play on their service with a proof of purchase (and a monthly fee, for example), I wouldn't worry. But their service was just more lock in.

I think one thing that was always unclear was if they were targeting PC or console gamers. Clearly they were 'PC games' but they didn't act like PC games (sandboxed network environment, no mods, no settings) and the console controller really didn't work right for many games.

The real target market seemed to be people who aspired to be PC gamers, but enjoyed the idea of a console and didn't have the ability/money to buy a decent PC (but had a great internet connection). Realistically, this market just never felt fully there yet.

It also was a company with a huge number of ambitious goals. This isn't a terrible thing, but it definitely pushed them to having a very high (reported around 5M/month) burn rate. Many of these goals, as of today, were unfulfilled. Focus overall seemed all over the place for the company.

This is why tech people should really begin negotiating severance into their compensation. Yeah, yeah - how do you get rid of people who aren't a good fit? I dunno. Maybe, make the formula for calculating severance account for employment duration. What happens when you got hired a week ago and the whole company is now being fired? I dunno. Perhaps a mass firing clause.

I don't have the answers, but severance pay sounds like a great way to protect against these kinds of assholes.

The only way to protect against this kind of abuse is to unionize.

It's certainly not the only way, people can demand these things when they sign up. They usually don't. More and more will start to though.

I hope these employees take everything they know about Onlive to a new competitor. Or Anonymous.

No you can not, not unless you are a VP level+ kind of person.

Sure you can. As long as more of us start doing it. When all the talent requires $SPECIFIC_COMPENSATION, then the employers provide it or do without talent.

Anyone taking reduced pay at a startup should have a fairly detailed contract that their lawyer is reviewing already.

Is it really that hard to write "=> also make sure I don't get OnLive'd" when you route the draft to your lawyer?

Sounds like a union to me... Standard contracts. We'll call it American Association of Programmers, or the American Programmer's Association.

Unionization is a big step. You get protection, but it's also expensive, makes HR sclerotic, and you run the risk of having union management wander off into lala land.

If you're a competent programmer, unionization is probably a net loss for you.

There are many models of unionization. I'm represented by a union (in Denmark), and it's not particularly sclerotic or adversarial. It's just an organization that is skilled in contracts and can provide advice and advocacy on my behalf, along with some information aggregation.

Their #1 most useful service is probably their email address that provides legal advice about whether I should sign a particular contract or not, and what my options are. Strikes are extremely rare, but consultations to ensure it never gets to that point are common. For example, if I were asked to sign a never-before-seen contract provision, and I forwarded it to them, they might use their backchannel contacts with the company to ask what this is all about, and, if the answer isn't to their liking, warn other members to watch out for this new provision. That helps make sure that changes like that don't slip by unnoticed. It may, admittedly, help that there is a cultural value against labor strife, so companies lose a lot of face if they get to the point of open conflict with their union. That allows unions to mostly do their job without having to exercise "hard power" like actual strikes.

The main things they do, imo, is to make sure that workers are informed about what contracts they're signing, and that companies get appropriate pushback about the more onerous provisions. Americans also do that to some extent, but since they lack effective unions, they have to do it via legislation, like how California has banned noncompetes.

Depends on the type of union. My father is president of a chapter of a professional union that covers engineers and scientists. Fee is $40 every month but you aren't required to pay as the union negotiates for everyone. Fee helps pay for lawyers to review contracts. The officers of union are all volunteers so they run really lean.

Salaries/Pay aren't included in group negotiation, just benefits including time off for health issues/pregnancy also they deal with layoffs/downsizing/rifting. Union also provides health insurance group benefits for employees if their employer doesn't provide benefits.

Well there goes the one draw I had to the Ouya.

They have (had?) a lot of great employees, so hiring feeding frenzy commence in 3, 2, 1...

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