Facebook Continues Its Bullshit with Oculus Accounts

https://kotaku.com/facebook-continues-its-bullshit-with-oculus-accounts-1845478595

by rrreese • 6 years ago

86 17 6 years ago

ElijahLynn• 6 years ago

This is a pretty good point and actually just thwarted my planned purchase of the new Oculus I was planning on buying.

"I think people should continue to make sure their Facebook accounts are in good standing before they buy the headset. They can work through those problems before they do it." ~ Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality at Facebook

Source: https://twitter.com/thebigdev433/status/1316926387664584704 (linked to from OP)

This seems similar in some way to Google deleting the Cloud Print service that my printer I paid $300 for uses. Google has this listed on their site "Note: After December 31, 2020, Google Cloud Print will no longer be supported."

Seems like a dangerous thing to buy hardware from these companies now. And the only sane thing is to buy open hardware when it exists.

m-p-3• 6 years ago

This seems similar in some way to Google deleting the Cloud Print service that my printer I paid $300 for uses.

Oh boy, you'd be pissed to learn that IFTTT crippled their free tier, especially of you bought many IoT devices with the "Works with IFTTT" label on it.

One thing to always keep in mind when you buy a device is to never buy it because of a specific service, but for its standalone capabilities.

viraptor• 6 years ago

Even better - if you can, but it got standalone capabilities and for open standards. "Supports webhooks" will stand, even if "supports ifttt" goes away.

bronco21016• 6 years ago

I held off for the new Quest 2 just to have this happen. Absolutely will not be buying anything Oculus now. Tech minded people may be in the minority but I hope our dollars speak loud enough.

Hopefully someone else gets some good, fully untethered hardware out there soon.

Jdjdjdjjdhebe• 6 years ago

Pretty big crossover between tech minded people and VR users though. Maybe that's just wishful thinking though.

It blows my mind tech people maintain FB accounts

tolbish2• 6 years ago

Is the HTC Cosmos line of VR headsets not sufficient?

vertis2• 6 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like the HTC Cosmos is PC VR. The Quest/2 is mobile VR.

While I've had some amazing PC VR experiences (I've been using and working with VR since the DK1). For me, Mobile VR with the capabilities of the Quest is the future.

Mostly, that's because I don't (currently) have a gaming PC or laptop.

echlebek• 6 years ago

What a great headline. Clickbait, yet refreshingly honest.

zaro• 6 years ago

but it still boggles the mind how these enormous companies, used to throwing their weight around in other tech spaces, keep getting video games so wrong.

This sounds naive IMO. It's not that they are getting it wrong. They are simply throwing their weight into changing it into direction that favors them.

SalimMcDoom• 6 years ago

Facebook itself is bullshit to begin with.

Jyaif• 6 years ago

Does anyone know what happens to your purchases if you delete your google account or your apple account?

20after4• 6 years ago

You lose them?

vertis2• 6 years ago

Having been part of the VR ecosystem since the DK1 and I having had the opportunity to go to Oculus Connect 1, I can't say that I'm surprised by Facebook/Oculus' move in this direction.

At OC1 they handed out copies of Ready Player One, and it was pretty clear that they saw a future where they could control and monetize VR one way or another. Though the irony seems to have been lost on them that there is an evil corp called IOI in Ready Player One trying to seize control.

In any case, it was only a matter of time before this happened.

The thing that turned me off Oculus development actually happened around the same time as the release of the Quest, where they started to aggressively gate-keep what could come through the store, more so than even Apple/Google with their respective stores.

You essentially had to pitch them a concept before they would give you approval to start building (this is still the case for Quest 2 I believe). Now, I grant you that it's better to stop developers from wasting time and money if they're never going to be approved, but I also object to being told whether I can install something on my device or customer devices (there are workarounds, but they are just that).

mark_l_watson• 6 years ago

I seldom use Facebook except to promote my books.

That said, I find my Quest and my Quest 2 to be such standout products that the FB account requirement seems like a minor nuisance. BTW, I used to work in the field of VR for SAIC, Andes Studios, and Disney. I think the Quest product line and available entertainment is absolutely first rate - love it.

I did use my FB account to upload many of my videos - easy way to get them on my Quest to watch in a fake 3D theater. And yes, I did have second thoughts about sharing all that.

mcv• 6 years ago

I'm suddenly kinda glad I still haven't committed to VR. At some point Oculus was a prima contender for my money, but that's now clearly a no-go. Them being owned by Facebook was the main thing that held me back. Turns out that intuition was correct.

It's increasingly obvious that buying hardware from a cloud company is a terrible idea. Google also has a tendency to brick IoT hardware. I think it may only be safe to buy hardware from pure hardware companies, but most of those would also love to become cloud companies.

DigitallyFidget• 6 years ago

I'm glad I replaced my Rift S already, but it seems like this article is complaining about how if you delete your Steam account you'll lose all the games you purchased on Steam. Except replace Steam with Oculus/Facebook. Like WTF do you think is going to happen to the games purchased if you delete the account they're associated with?

Personally for me the issue is that after reading their TOS for Facebook, I can't make an account because their TOS is basically saying "I appreciate and support the concept of surveillance, giving up all my rights to privacy, and am perfectly okay with having everything I sad, do, share, post, like, and every intimate detail of my life being property of Facebook that can be sold off to anyone willing to buy my personal details."

Facebook Continues Its Bullshit with Oculus Accounts

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