Sony has bought the OnLive streaming gaming service, but not to integrate it into its Playstation family. Instead, the tech giant snapped up the small company just to shut it down.
On Thursday, OnLive announced on Facebook that it will be shutting down completely by April 30. While users will be able to continue playing games, all accounts will be closed by the end of the month. If you bought any of OnLive’s hardware or games, there will be no refunds.
Just after that statement went up, Sony announced that it bought OnLive, reports TheVerge, ending the company’s five-year existence.
OnLive tried to convince gamers to pay a subscription fee to stream games, rather than buy expensive hardware and games. While it worked in the movie and TV world, it didn’t take off in video games and OnLive laid off its employees in 2012. They did relaunch last year with the Cloudfit system, but it didn’t work out.
This isn’t the first time Sony has bought a gaming streaming service. As CNet points out, the company bought Gaikai in 2012 for $380 million. However, unlike with OnLive, Sony is using Gaikai’s technology for the Playstation Now streaming network, which launched in January. Still, that service will struggle just like OnLive if it doesn’t get more games soon. There are only around 100 older games on the service at the moment.