Starting in October 2020, all new Oculus VR devices will require logging into a Facebook account, and support for existing Oculus accounts will end on January 1, 2023
I am already getting heat from users and media outlets who say this policy change proves I was lying when I consistently said this wouldn't happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn't in a position to make. I want to make clear that those promises were approved by Facebook in that moment and on an ongoing basis, and I really believed it would continue to be the case for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.
A few examples below so people won't make up their own version of what I actually said:
I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift.
You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift
No one could have seen this coming. Is the only way to be a responsible company these days is to stay out of the public markets, no public stock, where you are Legally Required To Maximize...
No one could have seen this coming.
Is the only way to be a responsible company these days is to stay out of the public markets, no public stock, where you are Legally Required To Maximize Profits?
This seems like another setback for VR. (A concept I am not sold on yet). Would Oculus be a better brand and company outside of the Facebook umbrella?
I think it's hard to say if Oculus would be better off outside of Facebook. I'd certainly prefer if it was independent from a purely abstract perspective, but one of the big issues with VR right...
I think it's hard to say if Oculus would be better off outside of Facebook. I'd certainly prefer if it was independent from a purely abstract perspective, but one of the big issues with VR right now is kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: the low adoption is holding back companies from being able to invest significant resources into producing better apps and games for VR, but that lack of "must-have" apps and games means that people don't think it's worth getting a VR device yet.
Since the VR market is still very small, even a good game can probably only expect to sell thousands, not millions. There are a few exceptions with the huge hits like Beat Saber, but overall most games don't seem to sell well at all. Because of that low sales potential, a company can't spend much money building the game, or it'll almost certainly end up being a loss for them. Even a small team like 5 devs spending a year on a game most likely needs a budget of at least $1 million, and making that much revenue on a VR game would be hard.
So the benefit of being attached to Facebook is that they have a ton of money that they can invest into VR without really caring if they don't make money. Losing millions on a game is a rounding error for them, but would kill an independent game studio.
Overall, even as someone that's very anti-Facebook, I think it's valuable to have a rich company that can invest a lot into improving the selection of VR games so we can try to get past this phase of feeling like it's not worth getting VR yet because all the games are just a bunch of 2-hour-long tech demos.
Of course, there are going to be downsides (like this announcement) from that approach as well, because the rich companies aren't going to do it for purely altruistic reasons.
Aside: the "Legally Required To Maximize Profits" thing is something people constantly repeat, but isn't true (and doesn't even make much sense if you start thinking about how it would actually have to work).
Facbook's acquisition of Oculus guaranteed that I would never buy one. At the time, Luckey claimed crap like this would not happen, yet here we are. I feel bad for John Carmack. To my...
Facbook's acquisition of Oculus guaranteed that I would never buy one. At the time, Luckey claimed crap like this would not happen, yet here we are.
I feel bad for John Carmack. To my understanding, the acquisition was a complete surprise to him, and it doesn't seem like something he would have advocated for if he had any say in it. A lot of the headset is built on his technology. VR has clearly been his new passion for nearly a decade now, and leaving the company would likely mean leaving the space altogether.
The problem is he would leave behind a product that he helped build from the ground up to work on someone else's product built on someone else's technology. It would be like if he left Id in 2003...
The problem is he would leave behind a product that he helped build from the ground up to work on someone else's product built on someone else's technology.
It would be like if he left Id in 2003 to work on Unreal.
It looks like he's slowly stepping away from his duties at Oculus to work on artificial general intelligence.
I work in XR for the University of Michigan, and we're already discussing how to get rid of Oculus. They've been helpful, they've donated about a hundred Oculus GO last year. We've also bought a...
I work in XR for the University of Michigan, and we're already discussing how to get rid of Oculus. They've been helpful, they've donated about a hundred Oculus GO last year. We've also bought a few batches of Quests, which are affordable, portable, and decently powerful.
All of which is irrelevant if we have to dick around with Facebook accounts for devices that we're going to be lending out to students. I'm not only concerned about my privacy, I'm obligated to be concerned about the privacy of several thousand students as well.
The Quest was a great headset. May others build many great and worthy successors upon it's grave.
I'm glad to hear U of M is being sensible about this! Dumping them is definitely the right thing to do! (By the way, I used to work at CAEN. Is that still around?)
I'm glad to hear U of M is being sensible about this! Dumping them is definitely the right thing to do!
(By the way, I used to work at CAEN. Is that still around?)
Yup they're still there. Got one of our student fellows remoting into a CAEN machine to work on some research. I imagine they're getting quite a bit of use.
Yup they're still there. Got one of our student fellows remoting into a CAEN machine to work on some research. I imagine they're getting quite a bit of use.
There's a part of my brain that is abhorrently against getting rid of that much hardware for software reasons, thinking someone is bound to jailbreak or workaround it, but I guess if it no longer...
There's a part of my brain that is abhorrently against getting rid of that much hardware for software reasons, thinking someone is bound to jailbreak or workaround it, but I guess if it no longer meets your needs, it no longer meets your needs.
Well it won't get tossed in the garbage. Even if I where able to flip a switch and get replacements for all the Oculus based hardware tomorrow, I wouldn't trash them. I refuse to throw out light...
Well it won't get tossed in the garbage. Even if I where able to flip a switch and get replacements for all the Oculus based hardware tomorrow, I wouldn't trash them. I refuse to throw out light fixtures I've replaced and I keep spare bits of wire I've pulled out of walls and appliances in my house just in case they might be useful. (it happens often enough to be worth it)
Also, a 2 year horizon gives plenty of time to phase things out without artificially curtailing their lifecycle. Tech iterates pretty fast, and VR is still in it's beginning stages so it's moving even faster. The Oculus GO is already a little short in some areas (as it was designed to be). In 2 years it'll be completely eclipsed by something else in the same price bracket, and we'll donate them to some area schools or sell them as surplus or something.
This is complete bull. Facebook already knew that a ton of people wouldn't want to sign in with Facebook - that's why they had separate Occulus accounts to begin with. That means that this whole...
This is complete bull. Facebook already knew that a ton of people wouldn't want to sign in with Facebook - that's why they had separate Occulus accounts to begin with. That means that this whole setup was just a bait-and-switch to get more people on their platform weather they like it or not. And once again, they pretend as if it's not a big deal to have to agree to their hundreds of pages of legal contracts.
I should have known better than to invest in a Rift S, but they offered the best value in VR by far. I knew that I was making a deal with the devil, but I was stupid enough to think the devil wouldn't want to take advantage of me.
Look at the comments on that page. Even the people who already have Facebook accounts are upset over this!
Oculus was bought in 2014, but they released their first consumer headset (cv1) in 2016. There was the dk1 a year before they were bought but it was aimed primarily at developers so imagine the...
Oculus was bought in 2014, but they released their first consumer headset (cv1) in 2016. There was the dk1 a year before they were bought but it was aimed primarily at developers so imagine the impact of ending their accounts would be minimal.
It doesn't track. Bait and switch would imply they offered one thing and then gave something different. Facebook buying a company then integrating them into their existing infrastructure is...
It doesn't track. Bait and switch would imply they offered one thing and then gave something different. Facebook buying a company then integrating them into their existing infrastructure is something that happens literally all the time.
It's still shitty, but that's because I have issues with Facebook itself, not because I think consolidating logins is a bad idea.
As @Saigot brought up, Facebook already owned Oculus years before they released their first product. Beyond that, the problem isn't just that they are consolidating logins - that's just the smoke...
As @Saigot brought up, Facebook already owned Oculus years before they released their first product.
Beyond that, the problem isn't just that they are consolidating logins - that's just the smoke screen - it's that they are forcing their users to agree to a whole new shipload of legal terms. And sure, many companies have 'living' terms of service that update over time, but this is literally an entirely new cannon of legal documents that has completely different goals behind them.
At least now is a pretty good time to upgrade though with the G2 coming out in September and offering imo much better value than the index (my headset) or the rift s.
At least now is a pretty good time to upgrade though with the G2 coming out in September and offering imo much better value than the index (my headset) or the rift s.
The interesting thing with WhatsApp is how easy it can be replaced. My social circles moved to Signal after basically a single meeting of âhey, WhatsApp sucks now, letâs do this insteadâ, it was...
The interesting thing with WhatsApp is how easy it can be replaced. My social circles moved to Signal after basically a single meeting of âhey, WhatsApp sucks now, letâs do this insteadâ, it was painless and quick. I got my mom on Telegram, I donât even think she noticed the transition.
Chat is so easily replaceable, itâs brilliant. The evil thing with Facebook is how they hold your entire social life hostage. Even Instagram, in comparison, feels easily replaceable.
Now, theyâre doing it with hardware, though. Fuck that.
WhatsApp is including some Facebook messenger features now though. I feel like they are on their way to integrate these things in the long term. If I click on the âroomâ button, I get redirected...
WhatsApp is including some Facebook messenger features now though. I feel like they are on their way to integrate these things in the long term.
If I click on the âroomâ button, I get redirected to download messenger (which I wonât, even when I had Facebook I refused to download it)
Right, on my (Android) phone I can't find that anywhere, but on web.whatsapp.com there's a "create a room", and then it asks me to continue in Messenger. Not entirely sure what the difference...
Right, on my (Android) phone I can't find that anywhere, but on web.whatsapp.com there's a "create a room", and then it asks me to continue in Messenger. Not entirely sure what the difference between a "group" and a "room" is?
Palmer Luckey (Oculus's founder) commented on /r/oculus on Reddit:
Well at least he's validating those of us who publicly doubted his claims. I'm still going to stick with competing devices.
No one could have seen this coming.
Is the only way to be a responsible company these days is to stay out of the public markets, no public stock, where you are Legally Required To Maximize Profits?
This seems like another setback for VR. (A concept I am not sold on yet). Would Oculus be a better brand and company outside of the Facebook umbrella?
I think it's hard to say if Oculus would be better off outside of Facebook. I'd certainly prefer if it was independent from a purely abstract perspective, but one of the big issues with VR right now is kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: the low adoption is holding back companies from being able to invest significant resources into producing better apps and games for VR, but that lack of "must-have" apps and games means that people don't think it's worth getting a VR device yet.
Since the VR market is still very small, even a good game can probably only expect to sell thousands, not millions. There are a few exceptions with the huge hits like Beat Saber, but overall most games don't seem to sell well at all. Because of that low sales potential, a company can't spend much money building the game, or it'll almost certainly end up being a loss for them. Even a small team like 5 devs spending a year on a game most likely needs a budget of at least $1 million, and making that much revenue on a VR game would be hard.
So the benefit of being attached to Facebook is that they have a ton of money that they can invest into VR without really caring if they don't make money. Losing millions on a game is a rounding error for them, but would kill an independent game studio.
Overall, even as someone that's very anti-Facebook, I think it's valuable to have a rich company that can invest a lot into improving the selection of VR games so we can try to get past this phase of feeling like it's not worth getting VR yet because all the games are just a bunch of 2-hour-long tech demos.
Of course, there are going to be downsides (like this announcement) from that approach as well, because the rich companies aren't going to do it for purely altruistic reasons.
Aside: the "Legally Required To Maximize Profits" thing is something people constantly repeat, but isn't true (and doesn't even make much sense if you start thinking about how it would actually have to work).
Facbook's acquisition of Oculus guaranteed that I would never buy one. At the time, Luckey claimed crap like this would not happen, yet here we are.
I feel bad for John Carmack. To my understanding, the acquisition was a complete surprise to him, and it doesn't seem like something he would have advocated for if he had any say in it. A lot of the headset is built on his technology. VR has clearly been his new passion for nearly a decade now, and leaving the company would likely mean leaving the space altogether.
Carmack more or less "moved on" a couple month ago to work on AI instead. He's only at Occulus as a "consulting CTO".
Pretty sure Valve or perhaps HTC would be interested in getting him up and running again.
The problem is he would leave behind a product that he helped build from the ground up to work on someone else's product built on someone else's technology.
It would be like if he left Id in 2003 to work on Unreal.
It looks like he's slowly stepping away from his duties at Oculus to work on artificial general intelligence.
I work in XR for the University of Michigan, and we're already discussing how to get rid of Oculus. They've been helpful, they've donated about a hundred Oculus GO last year. We've also bought a few batches of Quests, which are affordable, portable, and decently powerful.
All of which is irrelevant if we have to dick around with Facebook accounts for devices that we're going to be lending out to students. I'm not only concerned about my privacy, I'm obligated to be concerned about the privacy of several thousand students as well.
The Quest was a great headset. May others build many great and worthy successors upon it's grave.
I'm glad to hear U of M is being sensible about this! Dumping them is definitely the right thing to do!
(By the way, I used to work at CAEN. Is that still around?)
Yup they're still there. Got one of our student fellows remoting into a CAEN machine to work on some research. I imagine they're getting quite a bit of use.
There's a part of my brain that is abhorrently against getting rid of that much hardware for software reasons, thinking someone is bound to jailbreak or workaround it, but I guess if it no longer meets your needs, it no longer meets your needs.
Well it won't get tossed in the garbage. Even if I where able to flip a switch and get replacements for all the Oculus based hardware tomorrow, I wouldn't trash them. I refuse to throw out light fixtures I've replaced and I keep spare bits of wire I've pulled out of walls and appliances in my house just in case they might be useful. (it happens often enough to be worth it)
Also, a 2 year horizon gives plenty of time to phase things out without artificially curtailing their lifecycle. Tech iterates pretty fast, and VR is still in it's beginning stages so it's moving even faster. The Oculus GO is already a little short in some areas (as it was designed to be). In 2 years it'll be completely eclipsed by something else in the same price bracket, and we'll donate them to some area schools or sell them as surplus or something.
This is complete bull. Facebook already knew that a ton of people wouldn't want to sign in with Facebook - that's why they had separate Occulus accounts to begin with. That means that this whole setup was just a bait-and-switch to get more people on their platform weather they like it or not. And once again, they pretend as if it's not a big deal to have to agree to their hundreds of pages of legal contracts.
I should have known better than to invest in a Rift S, but they offered the best value in VR by far. I knew that I was making a deal with the devil, but I was stupid enough to think the devil wouldn't want to take advantage of me.
Look at the comments on that page. Even the people who already have Facebook accounts are upset over this!
I don't know if that really tracks. Oculus was a separate company before Facebook acquired them. They already had an account system.
Oculus was bought in 2014, but they released their first consumer headset (cv1) in 2016. There was the dk1 a year before they were bought but it was aimed primarily at developers so imagine the impact of ending their accounts would be minimal.
It doesn't track. Bait and switch would imply they offered one thing and then gave something different. Facebook buying a company then integrating them into their existing infrastructure is something that happens literally all the time.
It's still shitty, but that's because I have issues with Facebook itself, not because I think consolidating logins is a bad idea.
As @Saigot brought up, Facebook already owned Oculus years before they released their first product.
Beyond that, the problem isn't just that they are consolidating logins - that's just the smoke screen - it's that they are forcing their users to agree to a whole new shipload of legal terms. And sure, many companies have 'living' terms of service that update over time, but this is literally an entirely new cannon of legal documents that has completely different goals behind them.
At least now is a pretty good time to upgrade though with the G2 coming out in September and offering imo much better value than the index (my headset) or the rift s.
Except I've only had my Rift S for about a month. :(
oh that's rough buddy...
Unexpected Zuko......
Wouldn't this be grounds for some sort of consumer protection and/or class action lawsuit? This is the worst thing in that entire story IMO.
Is it just not in their DNA to a) not buy something b) not fuck consumers once they've done so?
WhatsApp still seems fine; and it's been quite a while since Facebook acquired it. We'll see how long that remains to be the case đ¤ˇââď¸
The interesting thing with WhatsApp is how easy it can be replaced. My social circles moved to Signal after basically a single meeting of âhey, WhatsApp sucks now, letâs do this insteadâ, it was painless and quick. I got my mom on Telegram, I donât even think she noticed the transition.
Chat is so easily replaceable, itâs brilliant. The evil thing with Facebook is how they hold your entire social life hostage. Even Instagram, in comparison, feels easily replaceable.
Now, theyâre doing it with hardware, though. Fuck that.
WhatsApp is including some Facebook messenger features now though. I feel like they are on their way to integrate these things in the long term.
If I click on the âroomâ button, I get redirected to download messenger (which I wonât, even when I had Facebook I refused to download it)
Which "room" button is that? I can't say I've noticed any integration between WhatsApp and Facebook/Messenger myself.
If you click the plus sign in the bottom left you can choose photo/video, document, location,contact or room
Right, on my (Android) phone I can't find that anywhere, but on web.whatsapp.com there's a "create a room", and then it asks me to continue in Messenger. Not entirely sure what the difference between a "group" and a "room" is?
I asked this once and it seems to be no.
What a surprise.
Thatâs why I would never buy any oculus (or any Facebook) hardware ever.