I am a fan and supporter of OnLive, and have used their service since their inception, and it is peculerly saddening to me that the company OnLive has reportedly been through multiple events. First off, I would like to give my condolences to the OnLive staff, and to their families. However, the news must be written about, so here we go.

What We Know So Far

• A minimum of 50% of the OnLive staff was let go today after a company meeting. Reportedly an anonymous source told Joystiq that OnLive is ”nowhere near going public”, and that Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive “showed no remorse” when letting go the employees.
• OnLive was secured by a currently anonymous new company.
• Today at 2PM there was illegedly a second meeting at the OnLive headquarters, where those of the staff who were offered to go to the new holding company, speculated to be either 50% or even 20% were asked to join the new company. According to Joystiq “Employees that remained included management and select members of the operations and engineering teams required to keep the service moving forward” were selected.
• The current peaks of users using OnLive was somewhere around 1800 active accounts at a time, despite the 2 million claim. The 2 million accounts are total users only.
• According to Joystiq “Following the meeting, management told laid-off staff to pack their belongings, return any key cards, and exit the building by 4pm today. When reporters were spotted photographing the building, management requested laid-off employees to exit through the garage and not the front door.”

Quotes

An anonymous OnLive employee sent this to inXile CEO Brian Fargo

“I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist.  Unfortunately, my job and everyone else’s was included.  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.

It has been an absolute pleasure working with you and I’m sure our path with cross again.”

OnLive made an official statement today as well

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 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.

Contradictory much? This is all the information that we have for today, if there are any more developments, keep your browser pointed to GVN.

IGN Source

Joystiq Souce