Facebook buys the Oculus Rift

Well, Mark Zuckerberg is at it again.

Facebook has purchased Oculus Rift for 2 billion. source

That virtual reality company Oculus VR was acquired was no great shock - industry watchers had been predicting a deal for some time.

But the fact it was Facebook doing the buying came almost out of nowhere.

News of the $2bn acquisition immediately trended on Twitter - provoking a mixture of surprise and, in a lot of cases, anger.

This pisses me off royally. I've been waiting to buy an oculus rift as I am a part time flight sim enthusiast, and I could never find that next level of immersion (head/face tracking helps, but it just doesn't lift you to that next level). Now, facebook has effectively dashed my dreams.

This reminds me of when I'd spent years following the development of Halo, only to see microsoft buy up bungie software and declare that it would be an xbox exclusive (I had planned to buy it for the PC, and that turned out to be impossible at launch, and a bug riddled PC port wouldn't be released for quite some time after, which I didn't bother to buy at that point).

What irks me the most about this purchase is that Oculus Rift was crowd funded. That company wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the people that backed it on Kickstarter, and they raised 2.4 million dollars to get it started. Why can a company crowd fund a project that became so popular, and then turn around and shaft it's backers and laugh all the way to the bank? Shouldn't the backers get a cut of that pie?

Absolutely ridiculous. The more optimistic have said that this will be good for the rift as the team will have more resources to fund its development. I contend it will be a disaster, and game developers will start pulling their support for the project (Markus Persson, creator of minecraft, has already pulled his support after hearing about the deal). Additionally, we can only hazard a guess at the creepy stuff Zuckerberg has planned for the rift. I could easily see him directing its development away from games and towards some super creepy social media chat interface that tracks your eye movements and scans your fricken brain waves. Ok maybe that last part is a little paranoid, but I wouldn't put it past Zuckerberg either.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


I feel your pain!

Not that I was excited about the game, but I share your opinions on Zucker!

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Yeah this is horrible.

Sony is supposed to have their own version with a much sleeker headset so that may be an option. No way I'd ever use anything put out by Facebook. Next to GMail, Facebook is the devil.

reply to post by Bassago


The problem is that Sony will probably use their VR set as a marketing ploy for playstation and other Sony products. I doubt they will make it available to PC users and developers (although they would be smart to do so now that the rift has been bought up by face*&#!).

Agree with you guys 100%. Zucker can kick rocks..preferably with Fred Phelps

I don't think it is worth 2B... what a waste.

As a gamer, i seen the OR, i was expecting more than a HUD.


500Million maybe.... not 2B...

reply to post by luciddream


I just did some math just to see what the numbers come to. The Oculus Rift was crowd funded by 9500 people. 2 billion divided by 9500 is 210,000 for every backer. Even if you cut that number in half, You could cover the cost of the development process, pay every backer 100k, and still walk away with a few hundred million. Disgusting. I feel like this is theft. I didn't back the project on kickstarter (because at the time, Canadians couldn't), but if I had, I'd be even more pissed than I am now.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


I don't think that is allowed in Kickstarter rules. You are not an investor who can get a return on an investment. You are not buying into a company. You are agreeing to fund a project for a certain reward (or no reward depending).

That said, it's too bad for the Oculus because I think this will kill interest from a lot of people.

The single largest bummer here is for some of us that refuse to play/pay Facebook. I was really looking forward to The Rift and now? Well, I won't buy one.

I will not support Facebook. I refuse to support Google/Youtube (don't pay them squat aside of them selling my information).
The time has come that the only way to vote is with your wallet.

Elton
reply to post by DeadSeraph

 

I don't think that is allowed in Kickstarter rules. You are not an investor who can get a return on an investment. You are not buying into a company. You are agreeing to fund a project for a certain reward (or no reward depending).

That said, it's too bad for the Oculus because I think this will kill interest from a lot of people.

I understand that...

It's the principle.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Hey I just found this interesting article to add to your OP!

Reddit users responded to the acquisition by expressing fears that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s control of Oculus could ruin the company’s progress.

Such concerns were met with suspicious rebuttals from several different accounts which used identical language and appeared to rely on canned answers.

A post which read, “Mark isn’t building a giant, single Facebook company. He is a building a giant network of separate companies that leverage the Facebook social network,” was posted by two completely different users in two different sections of Reddit.

Another post which read, “Mark has made it clear that he doesn’t just come in and # # up. He bought them, but they aren’t disbanding. He’s not taking over every last little detail. This can only help Oculus,” was also posted by two different accounts in two different sections.

Source

reply to post by DeadSeraph




Same dude... It's like a kick in the gut for gamers.
Facebook can F Off.

No innovation, just buy up everyone else's ****


Grrrrr

I hate FB

The more popular the Occulus is the more blind people will become irl. I think the Occulus is a cool device for hardcore gamers, itd be too weird if it became mainstream and all the accidents people would have using them about the house. I would say shrewd investment except he bought way high.

reply to post by DeadSeraph


Saw "RIP oculus" on my friends Skype status, guess I know why now. Facebook looks sh***y & pointless enough just staring at it on my monitor, oh, and so do their games.

Bad move.

DeadSeraph
reply to post by Bassago

 

The problem is that Sony will probably use their VR set as a marketing ploy for playstation and other Sony products. I doubt they will make it available to PC users and developers (although they would be smart to do so now that the rift has been bought up by face*&#!).

I have a feeling Sony is going to give some love to developers soon enough. Their recent marketing strategy has seemed to consist of
1. Find out what Microsoft is doing.
2. Do the opposite.

It's been working pretty well for them. The PS3 started out with Linux OS available on it and people freaked out when they took it away. I don't think they'll make more mistakes like that. It will become the fun place for indie developers and PC gamers eventually.

I've been angry before.


I have _even_ gone to sleep angry.


I have never woken up angry. Till this morning.



Why does this have such an impact on me. Is it Oculus RIP. Is it Carmack. Is it Zuckerberg. Is it facebook?

No.

I would have gotten over those. It's something deeper. More serious, and more permanent. Something that eats the heart out of the System. Something akin to an Aztec human sacrifice; where they rip open the chest, cut out the still beating heart, and show it to the crowd.


Past: In the early 2000's the nielsen ratings reported a strange finding for the new Fall Line UP. No one was watching.

Advertising rates were charged by the potential viewership that a show had. And suddenly none of them had any viewers to speak of.

Where had they all gone?

Well they were all online playing games with people all over the world, and free from any mental tyranny of advertisers.


Present: The entire internet has been hijacked by Advertisers, Advertising, and data mining.

What these self justifying mega corporations refuse to understand is that We The People hate them. They destroy everything they touch. Families, Food, housing. Everything.

We _would have_ watched television, if we could stomach the commercials anymore. And people are beginning to hate the internet for the same reason. It is infected with adds. When is the last time anyone clicked on a youtube video and didn't have 30 seconds of their life sucked away by the vampiric adds.

The poorly coded, buggy, internet-experience-destroying adds.

Lately even the few hit shows on Cable, are really just rehashing the stories that people were living in the early era of online-gaming. Game of thrones, Walking Dead, people were having clan wars and zombie mods a decade before these shows. Online, and advertising free.

Advertising destroyed Television. And like a parasite that has to find a new host, because it killed the last one, now they are destroying the internet. Facebook is the case study in this epidemic.

Facebook has succeeded in only one thing. It has created an environment where I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM MY OWN MOTHER BECAUSE HER MESSAGE COMES WITH GORRAM ADVERTISMENTS. They, Zuckerberg and co., have spread their infectious poison inside the family circle.





Future: Maybe We The People are not dead yet. Maybe We The People still have some small say in our futures. One where self determination can play a role. Not what the advertisers tell us, but what we know from our own experience. Living our own lives.

And KickStarter is invented.

We the people can select the future. Put our money behind it (the only vote that counts), and make it happen in the real world. The maker / modder community can create something magic. In these ways Oculus Rift was near perfect.




But no more.
Gorram advertisers think they own the whole gorram world.
But all they really are, and all that they are really going to accomplish, is now instead of killing things over time, or hijacking things that sprang up while they weren't paying attention, they are killing things before they have ever been born.


What does the future hold?
That nothing can be brought to life UNLESS it is baptized by goddamn advertisers first.

Why?

How could anyone not lose their soul trying to justify this.



Mike Grouchy




TLDR: Advertising destroys everything it touches.

I never understood the crowd sourcing thing ... is the premise that you should be happy the project was completed, and you receive pretty much nothing else for your investment?

InvisibleOwl
I never understood the crowd sourcing thing ... is the premise that you should be happy the project was completed, and you receive pretty much nothing else for your investment?

You are supposed to get something out of it depending on how much you contribute. A lot of people on the kickstarter page are demanding their pledge back (I'm assuming they never got the stuff they were supposed to get as it was supposed to be delivered to them when the project finished).

hopefully I can buy the second one for $350.00 before they jack the price up...

LA Times Business: Facebook shares fall 7% on Oculus Deal
LA times / Business / Facebook shares fall 7% on Oculus deal




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