If no employees get anything, why wouldn't they organize and threaten to quit together (leaving Walmart buying the name, a founder or two and some technology with nobody to run it) to try to stop the deal? Isn't the whole idea of accepting 1/2 salary at a start-up because of your glorious equity? Whenever I hear about these "deals" where employees end up with nothing or close to nothing, I wonder what they are thinking. Why accept that?

EDIT: I suppose if the alternative is "run out of money next month and everyone's fired anyway", then worthless equity and a possible job maintaining that code at Walmart doesn't sound so bad.