OnLive bought out, more than 50% of staff fired

OnLive is a cloud gaming company who have gained much attention for the relatively unique service they offer. But it appears that unique service isn’t matched by good sales as the average number of daily users is reported between 1100-1500 per day – not enough when running costs stood at $5 million per month.

The company has become financially unstable and was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy until it was acquired by another company. OnLive released the following statement:

“We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly-formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive’s apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships.

The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.’s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services.

We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed, and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive’s businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.”

OnLive had already been entertaining buy out offers from the likes of HP until they were acquired by the unknown party. Although initial reports suggested about 50% of staff were to be laid off, the new number is now thought to be in the region of 80-90%. The service is expected to continue but as a much smaller operation until increases in customers can justify more staff.

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