Facebook is a sham. They bleed their users dry and they don't even know it. All the privacy settings in the world couldn't fix how horrible a trade off it is to give your personal information to a site like Facebook. The people are what makes Facebook valuable and the people get nothing but the ability to use a convoluted website in return (where they can then provide the value and all their personal information willingly). It's a sham on an unbelievable scale. Google and Facebook are sucking us dry in the information age and people don't seem to understand how much better it could be.

Information is the most valuable thing on the planet and Facebook/Google are training people to give it away willingly and without question.

@patrickklepek I think one of the biggest faults of this piece is assuming that all of the people upset about the acquisition were backers. The kickstarter campaign has nothing to do with it. Facebook as a company has a history of making bad decisions; just look at the assumptions they make about security and privacy policy, currency...I mean they can't satisfy the users of their own service. Proposing that they will make good decisions with Oculus is suspect for people that didn't invest, but are hopeful for the future and are familiar with the past.

I feel kind of alone in this, but I honestly think this is the best possible thing that could have happened to Occulus. They are a company run by people who, up until this point, have been ardent in their stance of making the best producted possible regardless of time or money. While that's great in theory, at some point the seemingly infinite amount of time and money turns into a very finitie amount. This plus the added competition unveiled by Sony could easily make them start to worry about the state of their company. The Facebook acquisition gives them the financial security to go back to just worrying about making the best damned thing possible.

The facebook thing don't scare me either. Yes fb has done some scummy things in the past, but proprietary hardware is not their strong suit. Look how well the facebook phone went. I believe facebook will leave occulus alone to make something awesome and reap the benefits that way.

Facebook has increasingly made changes to their service that are anti-consumer as well as layout revamps that are always heavily disliked (even after the newness wears off). I simply don't want that kind of company having any influence on the Rift as I see them becoming less and less relevant in the future.

I think part of the problem is the general attitude towards Facebook in relation to privacy and dissemination of information. People are starting to worry about the idea of their digital footprint and for better or worse Facebook is the most obvious target. Though if you really look at the whole picture, both Apple, Google are fairly ruthless in information dealing as well as all sort of delightful patent issues.

If kickstarter continues to succeed and grow in popularity, eventually I think you will see backers trying to assert their rights not by yelling on twitter, but by trying to find a legal solution. Interesting article Patrick, thank you for your continued thoughtful work.

" 'And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.'

Yes, you did. Everyone did. And Oculus probably won't be the last time backers struggle with this idea."

In the sense that that was the end the result, yes. I believe, however, he meant that he didn't back the project with the intention of making a company alluring to a much larger company with which he has reservations.

As for myself, I'm bothered less by Facebook being the buyer than I am by Oculus VR being bought by a large, established company at all. Macroeconomically speaking, this purchase will likely mean more money in less hands. Buyouts and mergers can consolidate wealth, which in turn can contribute to disparity. I wasn't rooting for a scrappy underdog just because. I was rooting for a new, independent economic agent in an emerging industry.

While I would have preferred Oculus to have been bought by a different company, I'm still planning to buy the Rift & if this means that it'll be out sooner, with better components & at a reasonable price, honestly I'm happy enough.

I know backers for Kickstarters have no rights except for what the reward for their pledge was, but I still think this goes against the spirit of what Kickstarter tries to be. It's a way for people to invest in something they want to see made that "Big Evil Companies" won't invest in it because it might be risky or too niche. But if it turns out the Big Evil Company just steps in when the risk is gone and takes over, why should someone still invest in a Kickstarter because they believe in an idea? From now on I'll most likely exclusively invest in projects that I consider to be a cheap pre-order; and no longer in more artistic projects that I would love to see realized and will not really get any return from.

Besides that, the people behind OR must know that FB doesn't give two cents about the idea of VR. There's a decent chance they'll shut down the OR project in a few years if they don't see a way to profit from it and just use the OR patents to sue other VR companies. We've seen that happen so many times before. Even companies far less Evil do that, just look at Google. I refuse to believe that people smart enough to build a VR device are dumb enough not to realize that.

I feel that it's possible for a reasonable person to feel optimistic and ambivalent about this development at the same time.

The question I keep coming back to is this:

If it's true that this was always the game plan, and the endgame for OR was always to be bought out by someone huge for crazy-money, what if the original Kickstarter pitch had included that information? If the original Kickstarter had said "...finally, just so you know, after we make a few prototypes, the plan is to sell to Google or Facebook or someone. Thanks for funding our A-round!" would they have gotten the same initial support/backing that they got from the kick-starter community? If the answer is no, then I think there is something to the complaint that maybe there was something disingenuous about the trajectory from kick-starter to Facebook-buyout.

It's easy to lambaste frustrated people as being "naive", but I really think there is a reasonable perspective that is maybe not super thrilled about this. It's certainly going to give me pause before backing similar ventures in the future.

Personally, I'm hopeful. If this development means we get VR faster/better/cheaper and with more games, then that's fantastic. Here's hoping!

Thank you for writing this Patrick! I love the tweet from Plante. It's the reason I don't use kickstarter and instead save up my money to buy actual stock!

My biggest concern is not for the Oculus Rift itself that will probably turn out OK. But more about the kind of games that will support the Oculus now that Facebook had bought it. Facebook is not known for offering shooters or action games or even games like Portal or Mirror's Edge. So we might end up with a perfectly fine working Oculus Rift that we can only use to play "VR farmville" and "VR candy crush saga". Now there might be people who actually like that idea but most of the people who were excited by the Oculus are probably not interested in playing VR casual games with constant updates on the Facebook status of others and pop ups asking you if you want to share (whatever it is you're doing) with all your "friends" on Facebook. Strange that nobody seems to be concerned about this aspect.

It does mean, however, that oculus' focus is no longer on just providing an outstanding gaming experience.

@spicyrichter: That's always what was going to happen. Regardless of if it were Oculus or something else, people are out of their minds to believe that nobody was going to capitalise on VR as more than just a video-games thing. Shit, the Giant Bomb Staff were talking back when the Oculus Rift came out about how awesome it would be to have like a virtual cinema experience with the Rift. This is a market with a shitload of potential both creatively and financially, it was never ever going to stagnate as a video-game thing.

Patrick needs more credit, this is one of the best articles,( not only on this subject but in general) I've read in a long, long time. Going back to re-read some stuff that went over my head.

No it doesn't because their goal will be to create a piece of hardware which provides a good VR experience, and they have already done that. They are not going to cripple the device's gaming utility because they want to reach a large audience, you do not do that by alienating your original one and arguably the largest audience the device will have.

What you use on the device is up to you, it is not up to Oculus or Facebook as they cannot limit what you can view on what is merely a display device.

Really not sure why that's hard to understand. If Facebook owned Benq, it does not mean my monitor would be any less suited to gaming or doing other non-Facebook related things. Why? Because like the Oculus Rift, my monitor is a display device. What is viewed on that device is beyond the control of Benq and OculusVR.

This really doesn't change anything, and OculusVR already stated before this buyout that they are aware the device will be used outside of gaming, so supporting such use was probably on the table.

I don't understand where this trust of Facebook comes from. Because they have not completely messed up Instagram yet? Really? Really?! Because they have money? Does anyone seriously think Facebook stock will still be worth something in say, three years? Come on. Remember when Mysapce was at the top of the world? Yeah.. Maybe, if they are smart enough to push for a VR device standard, then maybe, this could end up in something other than a train wreck. But I don't have much hope for that.

I also hope this goes well.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Sometimes a problem is so obvious that it becomes easier to publish a 2000 word article to the contrary than accept what actually happened.

Facebook is not a good company to trust powerful technology with, and they now effectively control one of the most cutting edge VR tools in the civilian market.

This idea behind the Rift isn't dead to me, but Oculus as a company with any shred of credibility sure is. Here's to hoping the competition steps up and puts this whole sordid affair to shame with a superior product.

Maybe it's the weird Reddit/GAF corner of the gaming internet that I just don't get, but holding up Notch as some kind of mythical gaming hero gets real weird real fast. He's not unassailable.

Right? He seems more like an ass to me.

It would do people some good to to listen to the latest Tested podcast. They talk about Oculus's original goal.

I do not get why people think that this was just for games and that taking it away from that is a bad thing. Anything that attracts as much attention to VR as the Oculus has is great, for gaming or not.

Yeah, he made a game that became a giant hit and made a ton of money but that's it. Notch still doesn't get how the business side of the industry works. Hence why Notch was so shocked to learn how much it would cost to make Psychonauts 2. I think this "grandness" surrounding him just a bunch of people trying to show that you don't have to "sell-out" to be successful.

I'm less disappointed in Oculus as a real product, since it wasn't really a product yet. I'm more disappointed because it transitioned from being a company making a cool thing to being facebook trying to find a way to make money. Whenever the retail product comes out, we'll evaluate it on its actual merit like responsible people, but I no longer have any excitement for it. In one press release they managed to push me from "this looks pretty nifty" to "I guess we'll see what this thing is", and there are so few things that are genuinely new and exciting in tech that I feel bad when one is plucked away.

I'm not a fan of this 'big company buys small company' thing. Would have been nice if they just stayed independent, but I can see Facebook using this as their own gaming console, e.g. got to get an Oculus to chat and game on Facebook.

The conference call paragraph near the end calmed me down a bit. That logic and philosophy is the only chance this turns out right.
But yeah, the beast has been awakened and we'll all be jumping and running in virtual worlds in no time ^_^ (awkwardly open-mouthed like Will on the picture :P )

I never really had a stake in Oculus, I saw it with curiosity from the outside. So whatever business they do to keep going, I say good on them. Facebook buying them was odd, not because I have anything inherently against Facebook, but because the two companies seems like a weird fit.

I think more than anything, people's zealous praise of VR as the future of entertainment seems a lot more strange to me. It's way too early to make such bold predictions. And there are plenty of instances where "future tech" is cool when framed in a certain light, but when it comes to practice; come on. Think about it. We have phones that can do camera enabled phone calls. Like in sci-fi of old. You know what? Most people probably never use that because it's impractical and unnecessary.

@patrickklepek wrote:

"(Side note: I also think people have distanced themselves from Facebook, intimidated by how many people they have friended on Facebook. Social norms make us feel weird about deleting them. I'll disclose my method of dealing with this, but don't tell anyone, okay? Every day, Facebook notifies whose birthday it is. If you can't muster the energy to write someone a virtual happy birthday note, what are you doing being friends with them on Facebook? I've been slowly deleting people from my feed for years this way. I'm a monster.)"

That method doesn't work for me as I don't even wish my close family Happy Birthday on Facebook. But that's because I find the whole happy birthday wishing thing on Facebook to be the most hollow act imaginable (and I would rather call people if I can't see them). It is sort of what my issues with Facebook has always been. It's superficial social interaction at best.

My deleting people method have mostly been; "does this person's posts enhance or detract from my experience?" So far I've deleted everything from old friends to coworkers. As I don't see it as some form of obligation to stay connected to people who only fill my feed with garbage.

Probably because of lines like these from the original kickstarter page

"Developer kit for the Oculus Rift - the first truly immersive virtual reality headset for video games."

"Step inside your favorite game.

Oculus Rift is a new virtual reality (VR) headset designed specifically for video games that will change the way you think about gaming forever. With an incredibly wide field of view, high resolution display, and ultra-low latency head tracking, the Rift provides a truly immersive experience that allows you to step inside your favorite game and explore new worlds like never before.

We're here raising money on Kickstarter to build development kits of the Rift, so we can get them into the hands of developers faster. Kickstarter has proven to be an amazing platform for accelerating big and small ideas alike. We hope you share our excitement about virtual reality, the Rift, and the future of gaming.

Designed for gamers, by gamers."

That's the opening pitch they brought to the world. I've added the emphasis on keywords. I couldn't find any that mentioned "social media", "sitting courtside" or anything else that Facebook are proposing. It also got the most press from game magazines/sites and it was showed off primarily by game developers at game conferences.

I don't disagree that in order for VR to become more widely accepted, this is a good step, but it's obvious why people thought this was aimed squarely at games and that it would remain so.

"Someone took part of what the Internet provides and harnessed it in a way that could bring us all closer to one another. I love that, and still love that. I got over the fact that my mom uses Facebook a long time ago because it does a better job of informing her what's going in my life than my less-than-regular phone calls."

That they way I see it. I use Facebook as it was intended, and I use it daily and in a very moderate manner. I don't overshare, and I don't over post to my small circle of friends. I even mostly post in a 'smaller' group page of like minded individuals - who are Sony's Gamers Advisory Panel (GAP) refugeees - we have known each other for a decade. As far as information about me that I have up on FB; well, I limit what FB sees, and for what it does see I don't really have a problem with it.

Facebook is a tool, you can either use it well or you can use it clumsily. I don't have a problem with 16-25 year olds not wanting to use it, because I get it most 16-25 years old are very clumsy "If I do this, this is the possible consequence" types of scenarios. A vacation to a sunny beach is fun for everyone of any age; but what teen often gets into on a vacation or what college students do at Spring Break is debauched stupidity. Is it any wonder that a age group of people who can make a simple vacation a dangerous drunken/rape bacchanal is also an age group that abuses and misuses an social interaction tool?

Just as a child so sneers at a hot stove after they were burned, a young person will off course hate Facebook. This inanimate tool burned me is their view of everything THEY have abused through their own reckless use.

@monkeyking1969: PRISM and Facebook Terms and Conditions are what tipped me on Facebook. Not because I'm a dumb reckless kid.

The Prism program collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to Internet companies - many many hundreds of them. You're on the internet...your data is being collected. So of course, spray nard(?), of course you are not a stupid kid who is confused by the shape of the world or how it works.

I'm not confused by the shape of the world or how it works I'm just not willing to accept that this is the way it needs to be. You're acting like this was available knowledge before June last year. Go ahead and trust these corporations with siren servers. Information is the most valuable thing on the planet and Facebook (along with many others like Google, Microsoft, etc) can do whatever the hell they want with anything you put on your profile right now, regardless of privacy settings. No matter how inconsequential the stuff you put on your profile may seem, it is valuable to someone, and these companies are amassing obscene amounts of data on everyone (which is why they're so filthy rich) without giving the people providing the value (You) anything in return. Oh yeah, you get to use their website. That's what you get in return. a website.

Companies like Facebook and Google are condensing wealth to a dangerous level. I think we can create a better future than the horribly unfair "free information" future that Facebook provides.

Posts like this make me laugh, are you so special that you're doing some top secret stuff on Facebook?

I know how to avoid that. It's really easy and I do it myself: don't post stuff you don't want on Facebook, on Facebook. I really don't care if Facebook knows what I look like, what my cat looks like or what my music taste is. There are millions of people on the site, I would be honoured if they think I'm a unique snowflake and are watching me specifically.

What are they going to do with this information that I am supposed to be worried about exactly? I really do not get why people give a shit, the only way they get sensitive information about you is if you put it up there.

Of course the people are what makes Facebook valuable, without people the site would have no reason to exist. You can't generate ad revenue or run a social networking site without people on it. Was that supposed to sound clever?...

If GiantBomb had no users the site would no longer be valuable outside of personal pride of the owners. You can say that about pretty much any site ever.

http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/introducing-michael-abrash-oculus-chief-scientist/

Link to an article from Michael Abrash which brings up the facebook purchase, the more I hear about this from non pr people the more comfortable I'm getting with it.

@radioactivez0r: A lot of people on GAF didn't seem happy about Notch's comments. Reddit's upvote/downvote structure lets you pretty quickly see what a majority of people think about something, but GAF's a huge community full of people who love to argue with each other for hours and hours.

Very good article here, Patrick. Bravo.

I love how balanced this breakdown is. I still don't get how hyperbolic a lot of reactions to Kickstarter projects can be, especially when this business model (and the consequences) has been around a long time. My view is almost certainly affected from working for a professional products company.

I threw out some more thoughts over at my blog. I did a post when the Veronica Mars Kickstarter was running, so this ended up being a sequel...

I'm not thinking about myself but thanks for saying I'm worthless. It's been a rough week and that one stung a little bit. Cheers, you usually seem nicer here!

Try thinking big picture about it. Instead of "why would anyone care about what I do?" think about it more like "why would anyone care about what we do?" When you think about the sheer amount of information that Facebook collects and holds of the worlds population, and that they can sell any of that information to practically anyone they want, AND that they can use big data algorithms to parse that information and find societal trends, read markets, basically learn anything at all that you could ever ask or know about anything ever...AND that the amount of information they have could only be obtained by someone with as big of a computer and as big of a userbase as Facebook or Google has (as much as I would prefer it I wouldn't consider Giantbomb in the same boat)...the amount of power and wealth Facebook holds starts to be pretty alarming to some people (me). Especially when all of that wealth is so consolidated. The people providing the information and value see nothing (except a free website) while the people managing it get everything. Highway robbery at it's most efficient.

I'm not against what Facebook is, big data pools and giant computers are probably going to be how we solve most of the worlds biggest problems, but I'm against how they want people to not care about how our information is used or by whom when they obviously care very much about the same information. Don't you think it's curious how profitable free information is? My advice to you is to stop thinking so little of yourself and your peers, even if you only talk about "worthless" things on the internet, and demand that other people don't think little of you too because people will take advantage of that.

I'm not saying you or any of us are worthless, I'm just saying it's pretty silly to be so paranoid about it unless like I say, you are putting extremely personal things on there you would be worried about a company having access to. And well, it is true that none of us are probably unique snowflakes Facebook will want to keep tabs on, unless I'm Snowden or something.

@planetfunksquad: I read the tweet differently. I read it as, the middle class doesn't have enough money to invest in stocks but we can purchase the products. Not because we choose to buy the toys, but we can't afford to "properly invest."

His follow up tweet was, "The rich get richer; the middle class get entertained." Which I argue is a choice. If you have $300 to invest in a kickstarter, you have enough to buy stocks, but you chose not too.

@l4wd0g: Hmm, now I re-read it, I think you're right about his meaning. I took it as flippant at first, but it looks like he was serious...

No, no and no!
Just like Patrick, you completely miss the point as to why so many people are so pissed off.

Let's start from the beginning: Kickstarter is not about "emotions" or "ideals", it's about small scale funding for projects, that even venture capital wouldn't touch with a 30 feet pole for a myriad of different reasons.

If those projects on Kickstarter would have found proper funding by other means, they wouldn't need to be on Kickstarter in the very first place. In that regard Kickstarter is the last straw for a lot of projects that even traditional venture capital would consider "too risky to invest". Let's also keep in mind that venture capital investing is already a pretty high risk thing, so if they stay clear of something it's usually a sign that success is rather unlikely.

So these projects end up on Kickstarter, some collect a lot of money and a few of those end up doing something actually useful with it, leading to actual success. Some of these projects simply grow on that success, others start attracting venture capital and others simply sell out.

The problem with this whole system is pretty simple: It outsources all the financial risks on little people, real small investors, the backers. Once that risk is gone and a project has survived the maturity phase to become actually successful, suddenly all the venture capital starts flowing in, demanding high RoI rates for their money, or even worse: The whole company simply gets bought up.

It's yet another scheme of "Socializing the losses, privatizing the profits".

OR and Facebook are the epitome of that kind of behavior, not only did they simply "sell out", they also sold out to a company that's not just controversial, it also has a long history of fucking up anything related to gaming it touches and it has an even longer history of being anything but innovative.

I mean seriously, Zuckerberg's plan for OR is something along the lines of "There will be a virtual mall where you can buy things, walk around and look at ads!". I'm not making that one up, that's Zuckerberg's "vision" for OR, what an innovative genius! Wait, no he's actually an idiot with just way too much money and no vision at all, same story with buying up WhatsApp: If you can't grow your own userbase fast enough, you simply buy up the userbase of another product, works completely fine, at least as long as you are swimming in enough money to keep on buying additional users..

Also: Venture capital investing and buying stocks are two completely different things, Kickstarter was supposed to be "the little mans venture capital investing", now it simply turned into a weeding out system for actual venture capital investors. Backers are basically "beta testing" the projects for the big investors, so they can just jump in when everything is already running fine and without any risks.

Wow, great great article, Patrick! You're the rational conscience of the Giant Bomb community!