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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.
and I hope the CEO lost money, but I bet he made out fine. The guy cheated his engineers out of millions. He paid them in stock options while they built the company from nothing and then folded the paper corporation right before the investment money came in.
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On Live filed for an alternate bankruptcy protection status and as part of the process sold assets to Sony. Sony didn't come in heavy handed and Buy On Live then shut it down. The headline it inflammatory.
Network latency is going to keep all these remote game solutions as inferior. Even with fiber optic connections becoming widespread is going to be worse than local gaming.
I had two of the excellent Sony HDD 250 DVRs. They are/were better than Tivo until this last generation....well built, and a good first effort. They got data from TV Guide onscreen. Listings, info, and time. TV Guide onscreen was a listing service that would download from an OTA or cable station, interlaced into the signal. It was carried by PBS in the analog era, then CBS when digital transition took place. TV Guide was sold to Rovi (Macrovision). Shortly thereafter, the listing service was shut down. Sony and Rovi were both mute as to those of us who had bought into TV Guide onscreen. I mean, really, who could get screwed by TV GUIDE ???? So much for the old economy and assumptions. We were left high and dry. There was no alternate way to get the listings. Some units with later versions of TV Guide onscreen were internet compatible, but these weren't. Now, I'm not ranting about free listings. These units would not take a time stamp from anything other than a TVGOS source, over the air... So, once the TVGOS service died, your clock did too. No, there was no "clock set" in the menu. Whose idea or requirement this was should be shot. Twice. Some convoluted work arounds were devised, but the simple fact is that you had a random clock when you plugged it in. For the normal person, you just bricked it. No TVGOS signal = no clock = no programming. Thanks Sony.
The engineers wouldn't have jobs? Do you not have the slightest clue how this works? These were top of their field guys with tonnes of job offers who took _less_ pay in exchange for stock options in a company they believed in. They literally invested their lives in the company in place of their dollars. The through some legal slight of hand it was stolen out from under them. AOL did the same thing when they merged with Time Warner. When you have tens of thousands of dollars taken from you you don't "Just shake it off".
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This reminds me so much of when Sony bought Connectix and killed the Virtual Game Station.
Re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
We didn't have a lot of games on the Mac in those days, so the CVGS filled a real need. I hated Sony so much for that. >.
Sony: serial killer of the game industry?
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.
Nope.
You licensed use of several games for a maximum period of three years (go read what "lifetime" access was for a game you purchased).
Probably the most you'd ever get back would be a part of the purchase price proportional to the time you've had them (i.e. if you had access to the games for a year maybe you'd get a 2/3rds refund - after you brought in the lawyers).
One of the reasons that systems like OnLive weren't a good idea for consumers.
I tried OnLive because they gave a "full" game at the time without paying a penny. Mainly to see whether it was worth buying properly. When I read the terms and conditions of the "full" game, I realised I'd have to buy it somewhere else anyway as the game could disappear in a few years and I'd have no recourse, so instead I used OnLive purely as a demo and actually bought the game elsewhere.
At least if Steam does go down, hacks exist to run the Steam games outside of Steam. And you can download the compressed files of Steam games at any time, as a Steam owner, and use the backup facility.
With OnLive, you don't even have access to your own configuration or saved games, except through their systems.
If sdomebody buy valve they buy ther liabilities with them. That means current contract.
Valve has no contractual obligations to you whatsoever. The EULA limits their obligations, it does not institute them. And one of the rights they will surely have retained is the right to close their doors without notice.
Somebody could not simply shut steam down by buying it.
Who told you that? I want to make sure I never get any legal advice from them, because they are very stupid.
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They couldn't get sued by gamers for breaching a contract with game producers!
I don't believe Valve have entered into any contract with me to let me download my game library without DRM in any particular situation.
That they will not legally bind themselves to their promise to me suggests to me that they don't actually have any binding agreements with the game producers that would give them this authority.
It's hardly surprising. Do you really imagine EA or Ubisoft (or any other major publisher-developer) would permit Steam to do this with their games?
my $7 pint of IPA will make me drunk enough so that I don't care about screan responce time or filewall rulls.
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