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| OnLive employees fire, acquisition imminent? |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-08-17 22:53:55 |
| Interesting. The Verge summarises the loads of news and rumours coming out of OnLive today - much of the staff seems to have been laid off, and an acquisition could be imminent. Who will it be? Apple? Google? Microsoft? EA? Valve? CommodoreUSA? |
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| A lesson to be learned |
| By WorknMan on 2012-08-18 00:50:45 |
|
Whether this is true or not, I hope this gets users of other cloud-based services to start asking some serious questions, and I'm especially looking at you, Steam users. Sure, they might have promised to unlock the games when/if the service ceases to exist, but is that somewhere in a written agreement, and legally binding? If not, you guys are probably going to be taking it up the ass at some point in the future. I can imagine a scenario where Valve closes up shop and gives users the middle finger when asked about maintaining access to games that people hav spent hundreds of dollars on. It's easy for companies to promise the world while you're handing them money, but let's see what happens when it's time for them to deliver. Sometimes, it might be worth the risk when they have a fire sale and the games are going for like $5, but people who are spending serious cash on services like Steam REALLY need to start thinking about this stuff. Edited 2012-08-18 00:52 UTC |
 - Score: 7 |
| Really an aquisition. |
| By linux-lover on 2012-08-18 00:54:43 |
|
If it was an aquisition I wish it was Valve, but I doubt they would lay off everyone like that. I hope it is _not_ Sony, Microsoft, EA or Apple. If it was Google....meh. But I don't know if it is an aquisition if everyone has been laid off. Possibly bankruptcy? |
| - Score: 3 |
| What to say? |
| By saidge@yahoo.com on 2012-08-18 00:57:07 |
|
It's hard to know what to say. I feel bad for the employees and their families, and I've always liked the OnLive service and branding. But this? This is a dark dark cloud. Bad things happen in business, sure, and we brave the storms and trudge on optimistically. But I've had first hand experience with the abruptness of just this sort of sweeping change... and while I can understand the argument for it, I dare say, if it isn't 'unprofessional' then I would certainly class it as 'unethical'. Coming to work one day and finding out that, without warning, not only are you being termed, but the company you work for doesn't really exist anymore and your options are gone? I pray they're receiving some sort of severance. And that's to say nothing for people who bought their systems, paid for their services, partners who integrated their technology into their devices, etc. As for the buyer... Not much of a rescue here. More like vulture picking at the dead body before it's blood ran cold. Yeah, onlive is still online - but for how long? With what stability? And what can we expect moving forward? And what about us, the consumers that patronized OnLive? Are we to bow to the criticism we endured from our friends for trusting our games to the cloud? Were we wrong to trust in new technology? What will the future bring. I don't know. But I don't like waiting to find out. Edited 2012-08-18 00:58 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: A lesson to be learned |
| By linux-lover on 2012-08-18 00:57:53 |
|
Steam is a bit different as the games a stored locally on your machine. Valve has said if they go under they will simply let unlock the DRM from the games. They created the DRM, they can unlock it (actually people have thrown cracked copies on thepiratebay anyways...). |
| - Score: 1 |
| RE[2]: A lesson to be learned |
| By WorknMan on 2012-08-18 01:01:24 |
|
> Steam is a bit different as the games a stored locally on your machine. Valve has said if they go under they will simply let unlock the DRM from the games. Like I said, do they have a legal obligation to do so? And could they legally unlock games from the service that they themselves did not create? |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[3]: A lesson to be learned |
| By broken_symlink on 2012-08-18 01:45:14 |
| I think valve puts DRM on the games on steam, because some of them are available outside of steam as well, like world of goo, and i don't think it comes with drm if you buy it outside of steam. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: A lesson to be learned |
| By viton on 2012-08-18 02:46:56 |
|
> It's easy for companies to promise the world while you're handing them money, but let's see what happens when it's time for them to deliver. Then you get this: your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012. https://plus.google.com/u/0/11278... Edited 2012-08-18 02:49 UTC |
| - Score: 7 |
| Saunas...in August?! |
| By earksiinni on 2012-08-18 03:44:46 |
| Isn't it already steamy enough? |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: What to say? |
| By moondevil on 2012-08-18 05:13:35 |
|
Just do like I do, never thrust the cloud. Applications should be in the desktop, not hosted in some other peoples computer. If this means not playing a specific game or using an application, then be it. At least I have full control over the software and data I use. |
| - Score: 5 |
| RE: A lesson to be learned |
| By Ultimatebadass on 2012-08-18 08:47:01 |
| It steam goes belly-up and does not provide access to games I've bought from them I'll just download my whole steam library from some torrent site. I imagine people playing online multiplayer games will have it tougher though. |
| - Score: 2 |
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