OnLive officially announced on Monday that Steve Perlman, OnLive's founder and former President and CEO, is departing to work on his "myriad of other projects." Charlie Jablonski, the former head of OnLive operations, will become OnLive's COO and acting CEO while Gary Lauder, the lead investor in OnLive and the Managing Director of Lauder Partners LLC, will become the new Chairman.
"Steve has created an extraordinary company that no one else could have created. He is a unique entrepreneur and deserves his legendary status in Silicon Valley as a creator of groundbreaking companies," said Lauder.
OnLive as a company plans to continue building the management team in key categories. That said, OnLive is currently looking to hire people for the business development team, as well as a senior marketing leader. However currently the OnLive website still shows Perlman as the Founder and CEO, and doesn't provide any means of submitting job resumes.
"The new OnLive is emerging with greater financial security and a brighter outlook on the future. OnLive is now positioned to execute against longer-term projects with our breakthrough technology, products and services," said Lauder, also adding, "I spent my first week with OnLive listening, to gather people’s thoughts and suggestions. It’s an impressive group, and I am even more convinced that this company is poised for greatness."
As of August 24, OnLive reportedly said that Perlman would stay with the company and help with the transition. Once that was complete, he would focus on the next product releases and the vision. "There will be changes to the organization both with old and new OnLive staff that will be bringing new features and games to the service," the company supposedly stated. "There will be more announcements — both large and small, such as the arrival of the Vizio CoStar and the Ouya Kicktarter project, and stay tuned for major announcements coming soon."
That said, Perlman may merely be moving on to another project owned by Lauder Partners LLC.
Last week OnLive said that all of its assets were acquired by a newly formed company on August 17th that will continue to operate under the OnLive name. The OnLive Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption and all customer purchases will remain intact; users are not expected to notice any change whatsoever.
It was OnLive Inc.'s board of directors, facing difficult financial decisions for the company, who determined that the best course of action was a restructuring under an "Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors." The Assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual property, etc.) to the new company.
According to Joel Weinberg, CEO of Insolvency Services Group (the company named as Assignee), OnLive was in millions of dollars of debt and couldn't find a buyer. "It was a company that was in dire straits," he told San Jose Mercury News. "It only had days to live in terms of cash flow and the like. Something had to be done immediately or there would have been a hard shutdown, which would have been a disaster."
OnLive reportedly owed $30 to $40 million USD to various creditors. The company is now expected to pay back between 5 to 10 cents for each dollar owed.
