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Lauder's purchase of OnLive totaled just $4.8 million
When venture capitalist group Lauder Partners, LLC purchased and reformed OnLive back in August, it did so for $4.8 million, according to a letter to OnLive's creditors obtained by Polygon and the San Jose Mercury News. The company's blue-light special asking price was due in part to its $18.7 million in debt, in addition to the fact that the last of its available cash had already been allocated to fulfill payroll obligations.Granted, $4.8 million is still more money than we'll ever see in our entire lives, but it seems a bit paltry when compared with Sony's $380 million acquisition of Gaikai. Under the circumstances, however, this was as good as it was going to get for OnLive."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," says Insolvency Services Group CEO Joel Weinberg in the letter to OnLive's creditors.OnLive's creditors will receive around $0.26 for every dollar originally owed, according to the letter.
OnLive's mysterious benefactor revealed, 'almost half' of original staff hired on at new company
Venture capitalist group Lauder Partners, LLC – helmed by long-time tech investor Gary Lauder – is the group behind OnLive's new incarnation. OnLive representatives announced this morning that Lauder Partners' Gary Lauder is the "very accomplished and well known venture capitalist" that's helping bail out the cloud streaming service. CEO Steve Perlman spoke of Lauder in vague terms during the company's final meeting late last week.The new company will retain "almost half" of the original staff – OnLive employed approximately 150-200 during its height, and laid off over half of its employes last week when it declared a form of bankruptcy (ABC). Said employees will retain their current salary level in the new company; executives are said to be receiving "reduced compensation" from the transaction (as to retain more employees), and CEO Steve Perlman is apparently receiving nothing from the transaction. It's unclear why any executives would be receiving compensation from the transaction in a moment where so many staff are being let go.OnLive reaffirmed that "users should see no change in the OnLive Game or Desktop Services," and that "all of their purchases remain intact and available." The announcement also provided updated stats on OnLive's userbase, which "has over 2.5 million subscribers, with an active base of over 1.5 million subscribers."Update: OnLive tells us that the original company had "about 200 employees" (including temps) when the ABC process began last week, and "almost half had offers in hand at full salary when we made the transition." The rep also said OnLive "expect to get more offers out this week," and that it's "just a matter of processing the transition."
