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Sony Buys, Shuts Down OnLive
Jay Maynard writes The OnLive gaming service that rose from the dead and became an inexpensive way to get high-end performance on low-end hardware has now been purchased by Sony Entertainment. Their games, desktop, and SLGo Second Life services will all end on April 30, 2015, and be free to use until then."
And this is why I refuse to buy games that require a connection to some corporate server to play.
Sony and pretty much Microsoft alike have a predatory, disruptive model of work. Also it is not their best interest to provide a continuity of services, and change things every so often, to create artificial needs for new products. They also do not work for the best interests of the industry or for their customers, but only for their goals. They often also do shadow or questionable moves via proxy firms in order to not tarnish more their reputation. They are not deceiving anyone. Any time they do something like this, they are only being true to their core models. You are just naive and dumb if you do business with them.
When you have tens of thousands of dollars taken from you you don't "Just shake it off".
I did, when I did the startup thing. Well, there was some drinking involved. But that's the normal, expected outcome. for a startup. Anyone with half a brain knows this. You hope for that payoff, but it's long odds. This is why most startups these days pay pretty close to what the big guys pay, assuming they really are hiring equivalent talent.
This was not like Skype, where it was actually successful and the engineers got screwed anyway - that's quite rare. When the startup fails, you get a handshake. That's the game. And shipping a fine product is no guarantee at all it won't fail.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This was not like Skype, where it was actually successful and the engineers got screwed anyway - that's quite rare.
That a startup succeeds is quite rare. Just considering those cases though, I don't think ones where the employees also get screwed are rare at all. The groundwork for that is usually in place from day 1, with how shares in the company are split into classes.
For me it's been 100%: all three of the successful startups I've been involved with, all purchased by another company, did that transaction in a way that valued the common stock in employee options I owned at nothing. All the books were cooked until the company founders and, more importantly, the funding investors were paid all of the proceeds. And just to rub some extra salt in the wound there, the second also removed my name from the patent they were granted near the end of the process, to grease concerns that I'd expect more from the sale than nothing and could cause trouble with its licensing. (I signed those rights away in my employee contract, and all I really wanted was the little patent plaque)
The third laid me off, forced me to exercise my options to keep them, then valued the common stock at zero during the sale. That one's bonus fuck used some going out of business loopholes to cancel my COBRA policy with zero advance notice the week after the sale, as if they'd gone bankrupt and couldn't afford to administer the policy anymore. The company was sold for millions to Cisco; the engineers who built its technology lost their health insurance.
I've come to see these anecdotes as a pattern by design. Startups are not structured to make the employees happy if the company succeeds. They're setup so the majority share holder(s) get what they want. And there's a lot of rich assholes who will screw over anyone they can in that chain.
This is why people should get pirated copies of ANY game, program, movie, music they pay for.... Corporations are moving towards more and more DRM and subscription based "cloud" models. The more they do it the more you the consumer get screwed. Do you think they are doing this for YOUR benefit? no1 It's for THEIRS! You pay for something you don't "physically" get. Then they can take it away at any time and you get nothing and they got your $$$$. That is PIRACY to me... Yet they are allowed to do it.... So piracy for us is fine well and good in my eyes at this point.....
The simple way to show corporations we won't put up with this and all the DRM cr@p is DON'T BUY IT! If you don't like the DRM cr@p - why are you buying the games, movies etc...? The ONLY thing corporations understand is $$$$$. The more people that "boycott" their products the more they feel it in the pocketbook. Imagine if all the "geeks" that buy video games (with DRM) stopped buying them - how much money do you think companies would lose? What if "geeks" stopped paying for subscription model stuff? Same thing would happen.
I know naysayers will say it's not enough people and that there are too many other sheeple out there that will continue to pay of this stuff. But, "geeks" can take to the internet to put up "protest" sites, put out "protest" articles etc... How many "geeks" have had talks with their non "geek" friends about how bad the DRM and subscription based models are?
Think about it......
The Truth is a Virus!!!