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Report: OnLive Sold for $4.8 Million

by William D'Angelo, posted on 10 October 2012 / 6,968 Views

OnLive was sold for just $4.8 million to venture capitalist Gary Lauder, according to a report by the Silicon Valley Mercury News. OnLive, before it was sold was $18.7 million in debt. This figure does not include money the company will owe in the future for it leases and other contractual obligations. Creditor's will also now only receive 26 cents on each dollar they were owed.

OnLive which had raised more than $40 million from AT&T, HTC and other investors, had been looking to sell for quite some time. A report first came out in August that OnLive had sold all of its assets and had let go all of its employees. However no other details had been released.

"Had the sale to the buyer not taken place, the assignee would have been left with inadequate capital to fund the significant costs to preserve and market OnLive's patents and other intellectual property, thus greatly reducing expected recoveries essentially to those of a forced piecemeal auction," said Joel Weinberg, CEO of Insolvency Services Group, the company named as the assignee in the insolvency.

"When planned financing didn't work out, the company was left with few options," the new OnLive said in the statement. "Transitioning through this unexpected event has not been easy, but it has left the company much healthier."


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4 Comments

Slimebeast
Slimebeast (on 10 October 2012)

Only $4.8 million? Didn't Sony pay like $350 million for competitor Gaikai?

  • +4
VGKing
VGKing (on 10 October 2012)

You get what you pay for. Gaika is much more technologically advanced.

  • +1
ganoncrotch
ganoncrotch (on 10 October 2012)

Gaikai was worth money tho as a proven technology, onlive with the fear over it's head of being gone the next day is worthless considering it is a company which needs to exist for any of it's buyers to have what they paid for.

  • +1
Vertigo-X
Vertigo-X (on 10 October 2012)

So much for the "future" of gaming. o_0

  • +2
ganoncrotch
ganoncrotch (on 10 October 2012)

What happens to the games that people bought on the onlive system tho? are they still going to have full access to all their games even if the company paid back 1/4 to the people they owed money? if onlive owed me money for a games license on it's service and I got back 26cent to every dollar I was owed I know my game would be off their in seconds. Their can't be any confidence in this service left and a company like this with zero confidence means zero buyers of games which tomorrow could be gone.

  • +1
ECM
ECM (on 10 October 2012)

Well, bear in mind, the service was hardly what one would describe as successful or even well-known, so they can, essentially, ignore their previous customers and start anew since it's really not going to matter in the greater scheme of things.

(And we're assuming they aren't just using the tech and jettisoning the name--again, because it isn't really known it isn't really worth much.)

And, no, I don't support such behavior but businesses do far worse things than jilting a tiny handful of subscribers, so I think it's safe to say they'll have no problem cutting off that limb.

  • 0
ganoncrotch
ganoncrotch (on 10 October 2012)

yeah but what I'm saying is, would you buy a 50euro copy of Batman arkum city on this service with the knowledge that it could be gone the next time they have a fake bankrupsy or sell it to another owner to avoid 20m dept. this isn't like buying into an odd new console where if it goes under at least you have your system and games, if onlive goes offlive fully then you lose all access to everything.

  • +1
Soleron
Soleron (on 10 October 2012)

@Slimebeast They had no money, worse tech, bad management, and almost no customers. The only value left in OnLive is perhaps the media coverage they recieve. Also this purchase was really more than that because they are paying off some of OnLive's debt.

  • 0
Slimebeast
Slimebeast (on 10 October 2012)

Gaikai too had no customers though.

  • -1
Soleron
Soleron (on 10 October 2012)

Well Sony overpaid then. Should have developed their own streaming tech.

  • 0