Notch and the childish knee-jerk reaction. No idea why Facebook would creep someone out to be honest, you'll encounter creeps all over the Internet. It's just another social network.

Those that say Facebook is creepy are more likely to be the creepy people in my experience.

"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."

It's cute that people think Oculus are solely behind the games/software that take advantage of VR. Like, do you actually think OculusVR could (or would) mandate that the likes of Valve or Epic must use Facebook sign-in? Really? It would be impossible for them to enforce that as the Oculus Rift is merely a display device.

By this logic it's like saying if Facebook bought Panasonic, then future TVs could require Facebook sign-in to access Netflix or iPlayer. It's not going to happen.

Use your heads.

The Kickstarter was for a Dev Kit. Done.

This article kind of feels like typical industry apologist drivel.

People don't like Facebook for many reasons, and it's most certainly not related to having to many friends. People hate the changes they've made over the years. People hate their stance on speech, and the lack of free speech that they have on Facebook (your account can get banned for calling YOURSELF a dumbass). People hate the games like Farmville that they shove down your throat and the ridiculous costs associated to it. It's not just, "Oh I can't wish this guy a happy birthday. Facebook stinks." It's a hell of a lot deeper than that.

"and a promise there won't be specific tie-ins to Facebook technology."

I do wonder how long that promise will be kept.

I think the majority of this is due to people not fully understand what their kickstarter money was for.

When you give money to a kickstarter project, you are doing nothing more then being a nice person who wants to donate a few bucks to an idea in the hopes that idea will take off an be a real tangible thing one day.

While I do think it is shitty, and possibly unethical, for someone to take a kickstarter idea and sell it off to a huge company for millions/billions of dollars... it is entirely within their right to do it, and they owe you absolutely nothing for it.

This kind of stuff is exactly the reason why I have not/will not ever give any money to anything on kickstarter. I don't like the idea of giving money for something that I might never get anything in return for.

BUT, if you are the kind of person who does give people money on kickstarter, and you seriously never expected that something like this would happen. You are delusional and naive.

This is kind of off topic, but Chris Plante’s tweet is the kind of casually condescending stuff that you guys (games journalists) really need to start avoiding. The relationship between writers and their audience is already strained enough as it is. You talk a lot about how online trolling needs to stop, and I agree with that completely, but more minor stuff like writers being dismissive of their audience just feeds into all of that - all it does is breed hostility. There had to have been another tweet that got the same point across in a more mature way.

As for the article, I think you focused on a vocal minority. Sure, some people who are angry were backers and people blindly optimistic about the future of Oculus as a company, but it seems like the majority would have been more accepting of an acquisition if it wasn't Facebook. It would've been nice to see a more thorough look into the numerous well-thought-out issues people have. This seems like another case of getting away from real issues people have in order to focus on a small, overly hysterical group who are easy to paint in an unfavorable light.

Felt a little more unfocused than your usual writing, too.

As soon as I heard about the buyout, the impending internet backlash was the first thing that came to mind. I jumped on twitter and was immediately bummed out - not by the news, but by the reaction.

It's not like it was unexpected, but lately I've grown so tired of the internet circus that immediately sets up shop whenever big news breaks. The crazy soothsayer assumptions, the snarky one-liners, the retconning of things previously said so it better fits the new narrative, hell even the cursory gif avalanche is leaving a sour taste in my mouth this time around.

I've partaken in the circus many times before. I'm pretty sure I sent out a tweet or two about Sony "winning" E3 or somesuch. More and more though, I'm questioning the point of bottling my unfiltered reactions to things and displaying them online for all to see.

In some ways it's valuable to have a record of your gut reaction to a thing, especially if your opinion changes down the line. But I find myself scrolling past the reams and reams of quips and puns to get at the meatier stuff. The considered point of view. I'm super glad that Giantbomb is a place I can find it.

While i don't share your optimism, i have to say this is a fantastic write-up and contains wait i do think of the deal!

Crap reporting from the NY Times. A single anonymous source on the branding claim? Weak.

Jimmy Dell: I think you'll find that if what you've done for them is as valuable as you say it is, if they are indebted to you morally but not legally, my experience is they will give you nothing, and they will begin to act cruelly toward you.

Joe Ross: Why?

Jimmy Dell: To suppress their guilt.

You thought wrong.

Patrick is pretty much right. Though I think selling to Facebook was a bad move if other deals were on the table, even at significantly lesser value. We don't know any of that though, unfortunately.

If Sony were smart they'd refocus Morpheus to be not just a PS4 peripheral, but a platform independent peripheral supporting PC. Before the acquisition Oculus was so beloved it would have been a tough battle to win, but now they'd easily win what ultimately boils down to a popularity contest.

Oculus can win people back over if, over time, people see that Facebook isn't pulling the strings too much. They have to hope that someone doesn't come and steal their PC VR market away from them before that happens though.

Good article, nice to see someone look at this with a level-head.

You're wrong Patrick.

Legally, Oculus owes nothing. That is the only respect in which they don't owe anything to those people who backed their kickstarter.

Doing what is legally required of you is the bare minimum expected of people and companies in a civil society, and certainly doesn't begin to cover what is morally right or ethical.

If every company and individual does only what it is required to do, we're all up shit's creek.

Yeah I've developed this attitude too. I think its because the majority of people on the internet are children, and maybe we've matured? Only recently have I critically looked at forum posts and thought, why am I taking this seriously? The author of this could be 12...

Oculus as a company, and VR in general, was always about more than gaming - it's potential is so much greater. Even the games we do play on it will likely be fairly untraditional, or at least experiences built around the platform itself. I think that's pretty exciting, not upsetting.

Thanks Patrick for articulating the emotional reaction lots of folks had to this news, including myself. Part of me thinks this deal cements VR as a viable platform for the future on a grand scale. The emotional part of me is lamenting over the fact that the next potential Apple and Steve Jobs just sold their brilliant product to today's equivalent of IBM, distorted and co-opted by big business before ever leaving the homebrew phase. Lots of what ifs when you consider our history if Jobs and Woz didn't have the chutzpah to do it themselves. I sincerely hope it all works out in the long run, and in a slightly less dystopian manner than Mr. Fish surmises if at all possible. VR is still really cool, no matter who is bankrolling it.

@koolaid: I'm not positive or negative on this necessarily, but you're not alone here.

Yknow where I also feel lonely? Advertising. I hate the idea of my info being parsed by the NSA, but if companies want to fill advertising slots on a webpage that are more specific than if they had zero data on my interests I don't really care. People talk about this like its a given how creepy it is that companies show them more personalized ads, but if that's all it amounts to then I have zero problem ignoring video game focused e-billboards just as I would have no problem ignoring tampon e-billboards. I don't find companies advertising at me to be some sort of a nightmare scenario. Amazon is filled with ideas for what I might want to purchase based on my stored data. I don't care. I purchase what I was going to purchase anyway.

And to be honest the reactionary doomsday scenarios that include forcing people to sign up for Facebook accounts just to play a game or pausing your game to show you an ad every 5 minutes are ludicrous.

Would you define what moral and ethical standards you're appealing to? Without clear definitions, it's easy to hear what you're saying as:

"Actions are immoral and unethical based on how I respond emotionally."

Some clarification would help.

Dear Patrick,

This is the best article you have ever written, or at least that I have read. You hit the nail right on the head, you were straight to point and told it like it is. Kickstarter is the catalyst for dreams, but in the end, money is what keeps the ship afloat and the reality is that more money means more product, more quality (or so we'd like to think) and it allows those who love doing what they do, to keep doing what they love to do.

Thank you.

The most important thing now is how Oculus decides to use this money. Hopefully this will give them enough funding to give R&D a shot in the arm, finally get the hardware to a place it needs to be, and eventually start mass-production. What I really don't want to see is some sort of awful VR Second Life or Playstation Home clone which would just be the easiest and most profitable route to go, I suspect however that Facebook wouldn't need to buy out the entire company to make this happen so I have to believe that they see value in Oculus doing it's own thing (while also seeing the added benefit of being able to 'guide' development to their ends). Hopefully this all works out okay.

https://www.facebook.com/john.carmack.39

I will never share anyone's optimism for any VR unit. I mean, what would be the measure of success for it? 20+ million units sold? 5 million? 500,000?

I just don't think there's a big enough mainstream audience out there that's willing to part with big money for such a niche games accessory.

@patrickklepek said:

I think it's bit over the top but I think the point is more that Op-Eds should be labeled. This is a huge problem in not just games journalism but in almost all news sites. I honestly think that if Op-Eds were just flat out labeled it would diffuse a decent chunk of internet outrage. Without the clear indication that an article is an opinion it subtly implies itself as fact, intentionally or not, or much more declarative then one would hope.

@littleemille: That's precisely what it is. Funding for projects that otherwise would not happen. Wanting Oculus to refuse a huge deal like this because you wanted more than what was listed as a backer reward is foolish and clearly not how it works.

The problem I'm seeing with people who are trumping up the virtues of this deal is that no one's wondering what the cost actually will be of selling the Oculus Rift at cost. Facebook doesn't have to make a profit on the hardware. OK, but they're a public customers and their investors will demand they make some kind of profit on it. So where's that going to come from?

Facebook doesn't make most of its money showing you ads on their site. It makes most of its money by mining your private data for information to sell to advertisers, something you don't hear about because they don't tell you. It's them using the Oculus Rift in that kind of nefarious way that bothers me. If Facebook was still private, this wouldn't bug me so much. But they're a public company and public companies are controlled by short-sighted investors who want to see every last dollar squeezed at every chance. Zuckerberg wouldn't have been able to sell this to his board of directors without some game plan for that.

It may end up being harmless, I hope it does and if so, fantastic. But I'm not concerned about having to login to Facebook to use a Rift or seeing ads while I use it. I'm concerned what they're doing with the monolithic amounts of data they could collect while I use it and how they're using it to profit only for themselves, not me, with a device I have to pay to use. Of course, we can only wait and see and that's what I'm going to do. But with Facebook involved, there is a lot of historical context for worry and distrust.

This was a good article, it made me feel, well, not good about the buyout, but less bummed. Thanks, Patrick.

Well said Patrick.

I've been trying to tell people this, but you put it together in an editorial I can send now =P

@waronhugs: Did you even read the first paragraph of this article, they raised $75m only a few months ago. This is nothing more than a shameless cash grab.

Regardless of Facebook, it's depressing that it seems the only goal of entrepreneurs in the tech industry is basically just get a product to a point where they can sell it to a corporate entity and retire before 40 instead of truly caring about what they're company is doing and building an institution.

Take the game developers sold to EA that Patrick references and look no further than Bioware. The doctors built from nothing what grew into a highly respected developer and at the height of their popularity, a time when it would be easy for that company to be self-sustaining, they sold to EA in an $800 million deal and cashed out 2 years later. They abandoned their baby for a paycheck. And if Bioware doesn't continue their downward slide in the hearts and minds of folks, I'll be shocked. It's depressing to see this happen over and over and over.

This is why Gabe Newell is basically the greatest person in the gaming industry. It would have been so easy for him to just sell Valve to some publisher after Half-Life let alone at any point in the last 5 years with the exceptional success of Steam and retire. Instead he built and continues to build his own institution, which revolutionized the PC game industry and, it can be debated, even saved it. No one has ever said that about a tech company that from the outset had the goal of being acquired.

@kennybhoy: How about the fact that other industries are interested in using VR? There are multiple architectural companies using it to demo houses and buildings, Ford using it to see what its like inside a new car before building it, NASA using Oculus to see what its like to be ON MARS, also mental health professionals using it for PTSD.

The VR revolution may start with gaming but it's uses go far beyond anything that its being used for today.

Boom. There it is. You just put way better than I did. Thank you.

@the_dude_abides: And they recieved $16M prior to that. But that's venture capitol. An investment that must be paid back plus a percentage. In effect Oculus was in debt despite having millions. Yes taking this money was a cash grab, a cash grab that will ensure they will have the money to have custom displays engineered and more money to go to devs for making Oculus experiences.

I ordered my Oculus DK1 during CES 2013 and I'm very happy with what I got and I'm excited to see what Oculus will produce.

Though it is true that Oculus doesn't owe the Kickstarter backers anything more than has already been promised (i.e.: Tiered rewards), I do believe that, as one of the most important sources of funding in their earliest phases, that they should have found a better way to break the news to their backers in a more direct manner. I'm also curious to know what role John Carmack had in any of this, given that he's barely started (relatively speaking) at Oculus and then this happens.

As for Facebook, I think it's an odd choice for them to buy Oculus. I have no idea what their long-term goal is for them given that, unlike Instagram, the Oculus Rift is not at market for general consumer use. It's still in a test bed, under development, with early-adopting developers still largely in experimental phases of working with the hardware and SDK. To my knowledge, a workable business plan of putting the Rift out into the public as a retail device that has an actual chance to succeed has yet to come to fruition. Its greatest risk (with or without Facebook) is that it will become yet another niche curiosity that acquires a hardcore fanbase but otherwise flames out or tanks in the larger market. With that in mind, does Facebook actually have a plan? Do they have any idea what they'll do to sell or distribute the Rift in the next five or ten years? If it doesn't look like it'll pan out in the next three, will they just pull the plug and convince the developers to work on something they feel is more marketable?

Nope.

My biggest problem is the buyout announcement:

"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,"

"Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."

"We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world,"

"We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."

Fuck that. Listen, I don't know about you all, but I play video games to get away from people. I deal with people all god damn day. I probably spend 90% of my waking hours communicating.

I play games for a break from all that. I don't play multiplayer games for a reason. My hope was Oculus could take me even further away, immerse me even more. The last thing I want is to do is be sitting in a virtual living room with my 9 million facebook acquaintances.

The last thing I fucking want is 14 year olds calling me a faggot right in my eyes!

Really, I couldn't give a crap that they got bought... but by facebook? Christ. Yeah they know a lot about the core.

Clever article. But unfortunately I feel Patrick is too much of a fan of Facebook. This isn't all about the Kickstarter backlash at all. Most people would be happy if they were bought by a mainstream company to help them progress to market faster. It's mainly Facebook and Zuckerberg people have issues with.

There's a strong moral distrust in Facebook. It's not tangible. It cannot be logically explained.

The closest I can come to explain it is - it's like a natural human instinct. Detecting an imbalance in the world. This 'we take everything' mentality. Swallowing up everyones personal information, their interactions with one anothers and their data. And now clearly key companies that gain public interest in technology. Facebook IS an actual Skynet of our time. Sneaking it's way in as a "normalized social commodity".

DO NOT TRUST Facebook.

I wonder how Carmack feels being a facebook employee now? Wonder if he saw that in his future?

If Oculus stayed independent or went to a game company it was almost guaranteed that the Rift would have just been a high end gadget no different then the Novint Falcon (which also had support from Valve). In saying that Facebook does not care about the Rift, they care about the technology and being able to use that tech in more user friendly devices such as a Google Glass competitor. Also Facebook has to diversify or die, if Google just stayed with search engines we would not have Android or would not be this close to self driving cars.

@spicyrichter: pretty sure they do, heck they read everyones facebook posts. and guess what a lot of lonely gamers think about. sex. occulus sex.

Who cares, people who give money to kickstarter are utter morons. They "invest" in a company, taking all the risk without having a single share for potentially reaping the rewards. It's a loan at no interest, if the game is never release or unplayable it's essentially a donation, a donation to a cause that doesn't deserve it.

I think this is an obvious attempt by Facebook to expand into new markets beyond Social Media, a market they are likely well aware won't sustain them forever.

People screaming the Rift will be filled with ads over games are being completely unrealistic and clearly haven't a clue how hardware, or business for that matter, works. The computer monitor you are likely using to read this right now doens't display ads over existing content, the Rift doing it would be no different. Forcing ads to display over content with required firmware would drive away developers and users alike in droves, and no company, Facebook included, is that obvlious. I'm not a fan of Facebooks policies in general, but Facebooks future application of the device is simply likely to be at the forefront of the future market and providing separate exclusive telepresence software; thinking you'd have to login to a game with a Facebook account or buy it through some Facebook exclusive market just to use it is simply idiotic.

The only real heinous thing I can see coming of this is Facebook locking up VR related patents, which granted, could be bad, but would be unlikely to slow the open market down much at this point. I see this as just Mark Zuckerberg as a geek thinking Oculus Rift is cool and wanting to support it, then turning around and justifying the support to shareholders by calling it an investment in future markets, which it rightly is.

I find this to be a rather relevant throwback image for this whole debacle:

I don't care if the Facebook purchase leaves Oculus unscathed as a project. What bothers me, and should bother any right-thinking citizen, is how fewer and fewer tech companies are buying up the technology that could very well define our future.

Just for once I'd like a new player with a fantastic new idea, who cultivates that idea into something big, instead of just making it "big enough" to hock to Facebook or Google for a few billion dollars.

We are entering a future where a couple of companies are going to own the text and pictures documenting our entire lives, and now one of them is poised to own our virtual future.

I also reject the idea that Kickstarter is simply a "tin cup" you throw your money into, in the hopes the person holding it does something cool. Is it technically/legally exactly that? Of course. But that is not what nearly every project represents it to be. Buyouts like these will be the death of something like Kickstarter, because it essentially means crowdfunding the initial venture capital for risky new ideas, so said person with the idea can then cash out when the idea catches on.

Do I blame the Oculus guys, for becoming newly-minted Facebook millionaires? Of course not. They probably see this as a massive win-win. I just fear for our future, and wish more people with big ideas, also had the conviction to see it through on their own.

@fargofallout: That's a good point that I think a lot of people have overlooked, a sort of hardware independence so to speak, that people were expecting. It's the same kind of thing that many people love about PCs over consoles. We all know how much BS happens with devices that are tied to specific services, or devices offered by companies that also operate a bunch of services and do everything they can get away with to encourage you to use them, discourage you from using others, or just flat out restrict it entirely. Facebook seems like that kind of company, services is what they are all about, this article specifically says they don't expect to make money on the hardware.

@Frobitz I didn't see your comment, we're basically saying the same thing, concerns about how they will make money from it.

I'm with Notch on this one. It's like letting the NSA buy your company. Money isn't everything.

I didn't get in on the ground floor with Oculus to get first crack at telepresence software, I got in to play games! Which is why I say fuck this!

I don't know -- I kind of think it's the 2014 version of the American Dream(TM): Kickstarter funded, humongous payoff. That said, facebook is creepy in my opinion. Most people don't understand the privacy concerns the way they should.

I'm interested to see if all the money invested leads to another leap of technology, maybe a hybrid google glass type thing. I could work something much lighter, which I'm sure is coming. 10 years down the road? It might be mostly a coating on my glasses lenses, a la Transitions.

I wonder if this is heading to like a cell phone OS ocluus rift. Seems sensical, in a way.

This is a matter of perspective and I don't buy into the cult of Gabe Newell. As much as I like Steam, a lot of what Valve has done recently rubs me the wrong way. Valve has spent the last few years monetizing their games in incredibly insidious ways such as TF2 hats that people spend hundreds of dollars on, Dota 2 keys that you buy to unlock random items, Portal 2 cosmetic items for co-op, Dota 2 International packs that you buy so you have a chance of rare items dropping while you are watching a stream, Steam trading cards you can buy to craft meaningless badges, etc. I have no doubt that working micro transactions into games is affecting Valve's design philosophies and suspect that a large part of why Half Life 3 has not been released is that it does not fit with Valve's current monitization strategies. If it were any other company people would be crying bloody murder, but since Valve has good will from Steam people are willing to look the other way while Valve builds online casinos for cosmetic items.

Steam OS is another problem. Why does it exist? Who is it for? Will it ever support more than 10% of my Steam library? What is the benefit of switching? Valve has offered no compelling reasons for its existence. As far as I can tell it exists because Gabe Newell hates Windows 8 and wants to run his own platform. OK, but Gabe's issues with Windows 8 came from being angry that Microsoft was introducing their Windows store and Gabe was worried it would turn Windows into a closed platform that cut out 3rd parties like Steam. His solution was to build an OS built around the closed platform Steam. Sure Steam OS will be open to 3rd parties, but can we really expect Origin support for it? What happens when Valve decides to screw over their customers and release a Steam OS exclusive game?

The point I am trying to make is that I think people give Valve and Gabe Newell a free pass that they do not deserve. Valve is treading dangerous ground with their new business models and the never ending praise they get on the internet will only prompt them to push further into harmful business decisions.