Sony has bought out streaming game rival OnLive, but will close it down at the end of the month. It seems the deal is more about patents related to the company’s streaming game technology than anything else.

Neither side is revealing financial details of the deal. It’s possible the price may have been higher than OnLive’s turnover and Sony may well have figured that it was cheaper in the long run to get hold of those patents rather than either license them or risk courtroom battles.

OnLive will no longer collect any subscription fees, and any subscription fees charged on or after March 28 will be refunded. All current active subscribers will continue to have access until April 30. At that point OnLive will take everything offline and delete all data, including game saves, achievements and user info such as credit cards. Any PlayPass games will become inaccessible.

If you’ve bought a Steam game through OnLive, you’ll still have access through Steam, which will also continue to house any game save data stored via CloudLift. If you’re a Mac owner who bought a PC-only Steam game because it was playable via OnLive, you’re out of luck.

Hardware-wise, the OnLive Game System and Onlive Universal Wireless Controller will now become useless, short of a mod scene springing up. OnLive says it will refund anyone who bought either item on or after February 1st this year, though you must actively request the refund by e-mail to [email protected] with the subject line “Hardware Refund.”