If those devices were invented in 2020 you can be certain they would all be &quot;platforms&quot; with monthly subscriptions. They would also have nonstop rabid defenders on social media.

The Razer accounts are in no way mandatory.  They just have an app that auto-updates drivers (and probably does a lot of data mining) but you don&#x27;t need to use it to use the device. It is a funny comment though, I laughed when I read it.

I&#x27;ve used a Razer mouse for ages solely on a Linux machine. Never made an account. Only used Windows initially to set my preferred LED lighting option via their crappy app.

&gt;My monitor, mouse and keyboard don&#x27;t require any accounts (yet?)I take it you don&#x27;t have any Razer devices.

Agreed.Luckily my favorite purchases are on steam and 2 years gives me plenty of time to move on from my rift. I&#x27;m not going to be forced to use facebook.Last thing I need is a remote exploit on my tracking cameras and facebook telling them exactly who and where I am.

They manage to harvest my data just fine in Instagram and WhatsApp without having to login using Facebook

Because Facebook needs your data.And it&#x27;s incredibly creepy. Movement just feels like an extremely intimate piece of data.

Oculus Quest is actually a complete gaming console, which is why you can use it for untethered play.  You can buy and install games on it.

to track what games you bought and downloaded so you can download them again if your device breaks?

My monitor, mouse and keyboard don&#x27;t require any accounts (yet?), why does a device with two monitors and motion sensors require it?

For me it&#x27;s the reason, why I never started gaming again. I just wanna buy a game and play. I don&#x27;t wanna have any spyware on my PC.

I get all my games from Codex and Fitgirl. No multiplayer, but you don&#x27;t want that anyway.

FYI, Valve publishes the hardware survey and updates it monthly <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;hwsurvey&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;hwsurvey&#x2F;</a>The rest of your post stands, just thought you might be interested

Because the companies make a large amount of money on the platform. Look at Apple&#x2F;Google&#x2F;MS&#x2F;Sony&#x2F;Nintendo charging for access to the platform - either explicitly for online play, by taking a cut of sales on the platform, or in the case of the console makers - both.As someone who prefers to play games alone, it&#x27;s frustrating. The first five minutes after installing Steam is a constantly stream of &quot;stfu and stop shoving game release&#x2F;update&#x2F;sale announcements in my face&quot;, &quot;gtfo with the popup messages that a friend is playing a game&quot;, &quot;wtf? why are you auto-logging me into the messenger&quot;, &quot;no, I don&#x27;t consent to you building a hardware inventory of my machine and using it for internal stats&quot;, and &quot;jfc, please just leave me alone and let me play some games&quot;.It&#x27;s almost enough to make me buy a shack in Montana and support the post office.

Hardware is difficult and expensive to make, and consumers are very price-sensitive.In a world where everyone has a service subscription or a data hose to subsidize their hardware (see: most phones, game consoles, kitchen appliances, &quot;smart assistants&quot;), it&#x27;s very difficult to be competitive just making hardware.Given that the Oculus Quest is effectively a flagship phone with a strap attached to it at ~1&#x2F;10 the sales volume of a flagship phone (rough figures: [0] [1]), it would be very difficult to even pay engineering expenses without a secondary income stream enabled by a) real-identity advertisement targeting&#x2F;data sucking and b) ecosystem lock-in.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Galaxy-S20-series-sales-numbers-are-worse-than-the-S10-series-S20-the-people-s-choice.466485.0.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.notebookcheck.net&#x2F;Galaxy-S20-series-sales-number...</a>
[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arinsider.co&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;25&#x2F;data-dive-has-oculus-sold-800k-quests&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arinsider.co&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;25&#x2F;data-dive-has-oculus-sold-80...</a>

Doing anything other than logging in with your Facebook account has been crippled; therefore, logging in with your Facebook account is easier.It&#x27;s just like &quot;Download our app&quot; to get a service the company can easily provide through a Web page, but refuse to. It&#x27;s not there to benefit you. It&#x27;s there to benefit the company.

I understand allowing the option to login with your Facebook account, but how is forcing it make anything easier?

Because this is how the industry works now. Investors want to see the consistent revenue of XaaS platforms, so XaaS platforms are what you get -- and if you want hardware, it will be platform-tied.

More like the walled garden Apple App Store approach. Except this time it&#x27;s a company with a bad track record of tracking you.Steam is already the Steam of VR, btw. They have the flagship title (Alyx) and Oculus exclusives aren&#x27;t necessarily compelling enough to make it a deal breaker.

&gt; MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome)Do you have a source?

&gt; MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome)Google does not (need to) do this. Download a program like Fiddler and check for yourself.

They just want to squeeze as much data as they can out of you. The ultimate goal is to stand as a proxy between you and the real world. I&#x27;m not saying this is what they are trying to build with AR and VR, but that&#x27;s not too far fetched either.Just imagine eye tracking tech in VR headsets. What a trove of data for advertisers! Did the user see may ad? For how long? Etc.I hadn&#x27;t imagined that before writing this, but they could do the exact same thing in the real world with AR. Did you spend some time looking at that car? You are interested in cars. Spending some time in the garden? Watching birds? Running? Etc. What&#x27;s better than an always-on, always-ouside device which you use as a proxy to see things, and request information? MITM TLS (which Google technically does with Chrome) becomes useless if you just have access to the eyes.

Oculus was always trying to do this. When they first launched they did the same purchased exclusives stuff epic has done. Their software isn&#x27;t compatible with other platforms except through unsupported hacks and they have no plans of changing that.This was the whole oculus spirit since the beginning.

Windows Mixed Reality headsets are the best in this regard. Still locked to Windows but at least that&#x27;s not a social platform. I really wish there was a version of it with better quality controller tracking, it&#x27;s fairly good, but not on par with Oculus or Valve controller tracking.

The platform play was the only reason they bought Oculus.

&gt; Giving people a single way to log into Oculus — using their Facebook account and password — will make it easier to find, connect, and play with friends in VR.Ugh. I guess Facebook is making a play to become the Steam&#x2F;XBox Live of VR. Why can&#x27;t we just have gaming peripherals anymore without some kind of platform tie-in?

If that is the case it would be harder to get a FB account than to vote in some states...

Facebook has a policy where they can arbitrarily ban you for failing to &quot;prove your identity&quot; if they believe your account does not use &quot;the name you go by in real life.&quot; One of the ways they ask you to prove your identity is to send in a license.Unsurprisingly, this ends up hurting all sorts of people who do not use their legal names online: people who have just chosen other names, people who want to avoid being targeted or stalked, trans people, etc. They&#x27;ve updated this policy to allow for some of these situations (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;facebook-real-names-1.3367403" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology&#x2F;facebook-real-names-1.336...</a>) but folks still get banned for failing to comply.

As soon as someone manages to get your account flagged as possibly using a fake name I think.

You need to submit a copy of your driver&#x27;s license for a FB account these days??

You might not be able to use it even then. I deleted, not suspended, my Facebook account years ago and recently tried to create a new one because there was a Facebook group I needed access to. Created the account and a few minutes later it was suspended with no mention as to why and I was required to submit a photo of my driver&#x27;s license to appeal the suspension. I did so and ended up waiting weeks before discovering that the account was now permanently suspended with no ability to appeal. No reason given. I literally did nothing between creating the account and it being suspended so I couldn&#x27;t have violated any policies.

I’m guessing the upside is that if you ever lose your password there’s an actual account recovery flow based on identity verification.

If they suspect you aren&#x27;t who you are then yeah. Otherwise generally a phone number and email are enough. That&#x27;s the price for Facebook, but it&#x27;s good to be informed about what you&#x27;re sacrificing.

So if I don&#x27;t have a Facebook account and I buy an Oculus Quest after October, does this mean I may have to submit a copy of my driver&#x27;s license just to set up a piece of consumer electronics?

Better throw my &quot;old&quot; vive on Ebay. Some people are going to need some headsets!

Yeah, they just lowered the resale value of your hardware... HTC Vive it is then.

Yeah 2 years is enough for me to enjoy the Quest and then move on.I deleted FB for a reason and it will stay that way.A shame that their shitty growth hacking position will contribute more e-waste to the environment unless the headset can be fully jailbroken.

Is there anything to stop you from making a fake Facebook with a throwaway email and use that?Or do they verify accounts in some way now?

Exactly. I deleted my Facebook account years ago. I have an oculus account. Really disappointing though, it means I either have to link that to my girlfriend’s account or sell the oculus within two years.Realistically I’ll probably sell the quest, stick to buying steam games from now on, and buy a headset from a different company as soon as they get a wireless headset.

Isn&#x27;t it cool how you can dust off your old Nintendo Entertainment Systems and give your kids a blast from the past? Share your childhood with them?Well, that&#x27;s a things from the past with hardware it seems. Effective obsolescence through corporate policy.

&gt;If you’re an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years.At least this gives me enough time to sell my Oculus and buy from another company.

They should shape the Oculus Quest like an Alien Facehugger.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.getdigital.eu&#x2F;Alien-Facehugger-Plush.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.getdigital.eu&#x2F;Alien-Facehugger-Plush.html</a>

I guess there are still other brands who sell headsets :&#x2F;

... and the personal data on how much time you spend in which game, whether those are day times or night, whether it&#x27;s regualr or irregular etc. from which different information on your situation an be derived.If it&#x27;s connected to your desktop, it can also use all the dark patterns Facebook knows to tie it to your other activities ...

Worst case they delete his Facebook account and he can create a new one.

Isn&#x27;t it against Facebook TOS to have more than one Facebook account, or to open a Facebook account for someone&#x2F;thing that isn&#x27;t a real person?

Put in a data information request and see what they do actually know about you.May well be insightful. Friends who have your email and phone number in a contact entry who also have FB and synced contacts - etc etc etc. May well have more information than just an email address and way to look at it is - would you bet a large sum of money that is all they have? Always a good way of putting perspective upon things I find.

I have a bridge I&#x27;d like to sell you then.

I did this. Then one day, facebook locked me out of my account unless I sent them a picture of my driving licence.

I made an FB account just for Oculus apps that need it. It has no personal information about me except email address.

This is sad to me.  I would like hardware to be hardware and services to be services and I don&#x27;t want a piece of hardware to require a particular service, particularly when the hardware is of general purpose.  I can accept that an XBox wants an XBox live account because an XBox is for one thing, playing games.  An Oculus device really ought to just be a display peripheral that is used for communications, for content creation, and yes games.  I want something like that to be as open as possible.

Without assuming bad intent, I think it&#x27;s safe to say people will tend to think in line with what makes them comfortable with the massive amount of money they are about to get.

Why do you find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive?

It was 6 years ago in 2014.  Facebook has done a lot of stuff since then to reveal it&#x27;s true colors.

To close the deal, I suspect that many assurances were offered by Facebook. Why do we assume that he lied instead of someone at Facebook?

Maybe he assumed that his new position would allow him to veto or persuade the rest of Facebook to not make such a move? I could certainly see somebody being naive enough on that front.

I think he was 17 (or close to that) when starting the original kickstarter.Carmack also wanted to sell because he had built businesses before and wanted to focus on the technology without having to deal with survival.It wouldn&#x27;t surprise me if Luckey believed that would be the outcome. I think Zuck&#x27;s strategy as CEO was also less clear then. Today it would be obvious, back then though, I&#x27;m not so sure.

I think performing mental gymnastics to avoid bad intent is silly. Many people have actual bad intentions. “The divide between good and evil cuts through the heart of every man”

People often become conveniently naive when offered a lot of money.

He was pretty young and didn&#x27;t have professional experience at large companies. I think naivety is a reasonable explanation.

I don&#x27;t believe him at all. If it is true, then that&#x27;s surprisingly dumb of him. I&#x27;d respect him more if he just admitted he sold out for a life-changing amount of money. Heck, I probably would have done it too.

&gt;I don&#x27;t want to assume bad intent, but I find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive about the project and the organization controlling it.Let&#x27;s not assume bad intent and recognize the reality that things change. That any corporate statement or policy is not true in perpetuity. It&#x27;s very possible that at the time FB really did believe it. It has been 6 years since the acquisition after all.

Here&#x27;s how money works on people:Step 1: They get an credible offer for a ton of money.Step 2: Their brain starts to spiral out of control and can&#x27;t stop imagining all of the things they can do for themselves, their family, their friends, the world, etcStep 3: They&#x27;ve just created millions of incentives for themselves.It takes a very strong person to drive out the biases that money creates in our brains. Monetary incentives are the strongest bias creators, beaten (probably) only by sex and blood (i.e. family relations). Breaking them is the work of an iron will. You had better assume you&#x27;d do no better.

&gt;In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.I don&#x27;t want to assume bad intent, but I find it hard to believe that someone could be so naive about the project and the organization controlling it.

We see this time and again but ... you SOLD, you&#x27;re not the captain anymore.If the new captain doesn&#x27;t make the promise, you can&#x27;t give it much weight, and if it is Facebook, probably no weight even if they did :(

The same thing applies to the gullible idealists that believe in B-Corporations

I mean, this is really a condemnation of any data privacy practices whatsoever claimed by any company, as they may at any point in the future sell the entire company and databases with it.The only privacy claims one may wish to take seriously are those that occur simultaneously with promises never to sell the company.I used to use a location tracking app called Moves, which was a neat 24&#x2F;7 location tracking lifelogging tool. Facebook, the very last people I would like to have that data, bought them, and presumably integrated it into my shadow profile.Special thanks go to to the founders of Moves: Zsolt Szász, Jukka Partanen, Juho Pennanen, Aapo Kyrölä, and Aleksi Aaltonen. Hope you got paid selling private data that belongs to the users that entrusted it to you.

unless you flex your cryptoanarchist power and enshrine strong encryption into your architecture. what WhatsApp did. make it costly for the new owner to change their minds.

One can demand such promises from the acquirer in the form of a contract that states, in effect, this:a) If acquirer does X, the seller, Y, has the option to repurchase the company for $1.
b) Any future acquirer must agree to the same contract. If it does not, Y must be extended the option to repurchase the company for $1 before the sale.I don&#x27;t think anything less could constitute a true promise that the acquirer would avoid X.

is it such a big deal to create a fb account though? Can&#x27;t you just use a fake name if you don&#x27;t care about having a fb account?

&gt; Exhibit n + 1 on why when you&#x27;re acquired you&#x27;re not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer.You are in a position to promise something where you have contractually retained control, or at least contractually secured an enforceable promise from the purchaser.Otherwise, you are in the same position as Joe on the street.

We were in talks with a potential acquirer of our company recently and this was an explicit reason we gave to them why we ended up not taking the deal – we knew that whatever promises they made to uphold our current priorities, there is a very real chance they wouldn&#x27;t stick. And we weren&#x27;t happy doing that to our customers in our current stage (all early adopters).

This is why I was quite sad when IBM announced that RedHat would be continuing with “business as usual” ...

He had as much authority as anyone else to make the promise. Consumers shouldn&#x27;t have believed it from anyone.

Just curious to understand what does Exhibit n + 1 mean?
Would you kindly explain?

I remember the original reddit posts before their crowd funding on how they were going to be open hardware.Then open firmware.Then support Linux.Then ...

It&#x27;s possible to get assurances but you must write them down in the form of legal agreements.Getting &quot;company assurance at the highest level&quot; is just as good as is the word of the person at the highest level. There are people for whom their word is their bond, but it&#x27;s not very common.

Exhibit n + 1 on why when you&#x27;re acquired you&#x27;re not in a position to promise anything to anyone despite any assurances from the acquirer. Or, from the consumer&#x27;s side, why those promises should carry no weight.

These promises are made from acquirers to acquirees so that they can save face, and tell everyone that they received these promises so that they have a rebuttal to accusations of being a &quot;sell-out.&quot;They aren&#x27;t done with a wink and a nudge, but everyone knows that they&#x27;re bullshit, it lets the entrepreneur maintain his public image while letting the carnivore devour its meal in due course.

Yep: you cannot promise anything beyond your control.

I would argue that he was and still is lying. He had the power to make good on his promise in the form of contractual terms during the sale, but didn&#x27;t.

It doesn&#x27;t really matter though, does it? No matter what the history of Facebook he wasn&#x27;t in a position to make those promises, period.You can only make promises about what you control.

The fact that it was actually discussed back then, people were asking about it and that Luckey was assuring them that it won&#x27;t happen (even despite of the fact that he wasn&#x27;t going to be in charge anymore) clearly shows that Facebook&#x27;s reputation wasn&#x27;t as &quot;significantly different&quot; back then than how you paint it.

afaik they also betrayed similar promises made to the WhatsApp founders, to their dismay.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;4&#x2F;30&#x2F;17304792&#x2F;whatsapp-jan-koum-facebook-data-privacy-encryption" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;4&#x2F;30&#x2F;17304792&#x2F;whatsapp-jan-kou...</a>

The people here are very on point and no doubt said the same thing in 2014 if they were privacy minded at the time. Most are under no delusion that &quot;we will not do _______ , either now, or in the future&quot; as empty promises. They were right then and they&#x27;re right now. Facebook has obviously been in the business of selling its users out from the very beginning and no one who lives in this reality would have accepted such a promise from them as anything other than a nicety.

No.This development was trivially predictable right when Facebook acquired Oculus. Which is why I bought Vive instead.You don&#x27;t need to be a genius to see stuff like this ahead of time. All you have to do is refuse to be gaslit and be honest about the high-level drivers of corporate decision-making.

Here&#x27;s a blog post I wrote in response to the acquisition when it happened in 2014: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@shazow&#x2F;re-facebook-acquires-oculus-f8589a747d11" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@shazow&#x2F;re-facebook-acquires-oculus-f8589...</a>I was far from the only one who was saying this at the time. I don&#x27;t believe Facebook had a significantly different reputation in 2014.I also have a follow-up draft from 2016 that talks about how the things predicted in the blog post have already begun.

Mmm... nah.From the 2014 HN thread[0]&gt;Please login using your Facebook account to continue.[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7469242" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7469242</a>

Facebook&#x27;s reputations in 2014 or 2020 don&#x27;t matter.  This is what happens and how the world works.

I have to disagree, many assumed there would be some kind of hamfisted integration even in 2014. The only surprising thing is how long they held off.I had huge concerns regarding FB&#x27;s purchase of Oculus at the time and I wasn&#x27;t the only one. It was the single reason I did not buy an Oculus. It wasn&#x27;t that I thought they would be brazen either, I just assumed they would be hoovering data up behind the scenes, and trading data between Oculus and FB.If this announcement had occurred in 2014, it would not have been surprising, I think the concerns were clear from the outset to most of the community. The only people who were starry eyed were those who just wanted Oculus funded well and were happy to take the word of the founder.

&gt; Facebook had pretty significantly different reputation in 2014That&#x27;s not really true. Hipster antitrust wasn&#x27;t a thing yet, so people weren&#x27;t talking about it at your neighborhood Starbucks. But serious people were talking about it. Look at the conflicts of interest disclosures for prominent antitrust scholars... they were busy during that period.Also, the infamous &quot;Zuckerberg destroy mode&quot; email is from 2012.

&gt;user: nrp&gt;Founder at Framework, formerly part of the Oculus founding teamI don&#x27;t recall it being much different, but I _do_ recall the outcry from Oculus followers and fans when the buyout occurred. This is exactly what we predicted and the fact that PL was assuring us it wouldn&#x27;t happen would seem to disagree with what you&#x27;re saying. It seems you may have just been ignoring it at the time for what may be a very obvious reason.

Partner Luckey himself had admitted he was wrong. Why are you holding out and embarassing yourself further?

I was posting here and reddit in 2014. No they really had a terrible reputation back then too.

No. Facebook already had a history of lying by 2014.

Most of the folks on this thread are commenting from the perspective of 2020, but Facebook had pretty significantly different reputation in 2014, especially around M&amp;A.  They had recently brought in both Instagram and WhatsApp without meddling in either their product stacks or their leadership teams.  It&#x27;s easy to claim now that this was all naive, but at the time it was plausible that these organizations and brands would remain fairly independent and autonomous within the Facebook umbrella.

Facebook has historically be truly crappy in this regards. The Instagram founders had a similar story, but rather than publish a half-apology, they left the company (walking away from quite a bit of money in the process.It&#x27;s gotta be hard to be a founder in a situation like this.

I think Brendan Iribe did most of the management and fundraising. I like Palmer, but my impression was he hacked together a series of prototypes in the garage and ended up with a device that showed enough promise to bring in Iribe and Carmack.(I think he really did believe at the time that Facebook wouldn&#x27;t Facebook it up.)

&gt; Palmer Luckey does not strike me as an absolute beginner hereWhich is why smart founders can still get away with making these statements during the acquisitions so they can continue to grow their company post close (which means their post close bonus also stays in tact) and then leave after their golden handcuffs are done (usually 2-5 years).&gt; For me the heuristic is simple: I won&#x27;t believe a word a CEO that is selling his company says about what will happen post deal. They are no longer in control and should know better.For me, its on the other side of the coin. If I&#x27;m a founder and someone gives me billions of dollars for both acquiring my company and an additional bonus to pump the company I&#x27;m 100% incentivized to do everything possible to ensure that...even making forward statements that I don&#x27;t genuinely believe are going to happen.For everyone else - don&#x27;t trust anyting an acquirer says - follow what they do.

&gt;As a CEO of a company that is being sold you can not make any binding statements about the future of the company you will no longer own.Agreed, but that&#x27;s no different that ANY corporate statement on anything. Things change. A policy or statement may be true this year, but may not be true next year.GitHub made many nice statements post-Microsoft acquisition, and you know what, Microsoft execs may even believe all of them today. In 5 years though - who knows.&gt;Of course he and FB had a pretty strong incentive to ensure that there wouldn&#x27;t be an immediate break-off risk to the acquisition, and of course there was plenty of evidence from other acquisitions that this is how the world works.That could be part of it. It could also be the case that FB just didn&#x27;t make any decisions pertaining to this aspect of Oculus at that point in time. It could also be the case that FB had many different factions within its org that pushed for different things - one faction wanted to use FB login, another did not and the former faction won after a while.This is less nefarious than people are making it out to be.

While your points are reasonable and I’d normally agree with them, Palmer as a person seems to be the opposite of this.Look at his exit from FB and his funding of Trump groups in 2016.His life, in its successes and failures, has often been the result of what appears to be optimistic naivety.He believed BigCo FB would keep their word to him on FB login not being required. He believed FB wouldn’t essentially fire him for his political opinions as well.

While the story is Palmer founded Oculus (and he was the original founder, so there is truth there), really Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov and Nate Mitchell (Scaleform Mafia, all serial founders) negotiated the Facebook acquisition. Palmer was pushed out first after acquisition. He&#x27;s a nice marketing story (nerdy young white boy reinvents VR) but he wasn&#x27;t the driving force behind the business success (Brendan and Nate) or technical success (Carmack, Antonov, Abrash and many others like Dean Beeler and Volga Askoy).We&#x27;re also in a world where all the founders of Oculus have quit and no longer have a say in decisions like this. Facebook foundational employees and recent hires are running the show and the end game for Oculus is to give Facebook a platform that they control that is as pervasive as iOS or Android (or at least Xbox or PlayStation).As a former Oculus and Facebook employee I&#x27;m torn by this. I always understood how a none trivial portion of the Oculus user base is extremely anti-Facebook, or even how people with Facebook accounts didn&#x27;t want their Facebook account tied to Oculus. At the same time it would seriously reduce technical friction around using Facebook backend features in Oculus products. I know some folks would see this as a complete negative and I understand where you are coming from, but there are some interesting positive use cases as well.

As a CEO of a company that is being sold you can not make any binding statements about the future of the company you will no longer own. This is really management 101 and Palmer Luckey does not strike me as an absolute beginner here, he knew how to get funded, how to execute and had a ton of people telling him this would happen. Of course he and FB had a pretty strong incentive to ensure that there wouldn&#x27;t be an immediate break-off risk to the acquisition, and of course there was plenty of evidence from other acquisitions that this is how the world works.I&#x27;d like to believe him, but it is pretty hard to do so given the historic record of acquisitions to date.For me the heuristic is simple: I won&#x27;t believe a word a CEO that is selling his company says about what will happen post deal. They are no longer in control and should know better.

He absolutely knew that this was a very real possibility and made the statements anyways to save face at the time. He was probably hoping no one would care when it eventually happened.

This is great advice until Facebook blocks your secondary accounts, which might end up costing you access to any data&#x2F;saves&#x2F;content tied to your oculus or whatever linked services. Just look at how much destruction Google causes people and businesses by closing down all of their accounts for even accidental associations with flagged accounts.

I tried doing that just moments ago and it wouldn&#x27;t let me proceed without providing a phone number.

Better send it back and ask for a refund. They intentionally broke something they advertised with.

What phone number do you use for each account you create?

Until they make you download the FB app to use it, and then they get access to everything you do on your phone and follow you around the internet. So sacrifice your privacy, or sacrifice the Oculus. I know which one I&#x27;m going to choose.

Just make a fake FB account exclusively for this purpose. If you&#x27;re forced to use a FB account at least don&#x27;t link it to your actual profile. I have a separate fake FB account for every service that requires FB.

also interesting from that reddit thread were these comments:&gt; I&#x27;m mostly surprised that they haven&#x27;t done this with Whatsapp or Instagram thus far, but they are doing it for Oculus accounts.&gt; &gt; As of a few days ago, they&#x27;re starting the process of moving Instagram DMs to Messenger, requiring a FB account. So, they are.&gt; &gt; &gt; The people I know in product at Facebook are certain it is an inevitability for their entire portfolio. That&#x27;s second-party hearsay, so take it as you will, but it&#x27;s my operating understanding that is their long term (multi-year) goal.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;oculus&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ic4ye1&#x2F;new_oculus_users_required_to_use_a_facebook&#x2F;g20eq85&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;oculus&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ic4ye1&#x2F;new_oculus_u...</a>

My preliminary and not very careful analysis reveals that he doesn&#x27;t give a fuck about anybody except for #1.

Hopefully Palmer Luckey has more foresight into how technology can be used in unintended ways now that he is building autonomous defense and surveillance system at Anduril Industries.

I don&#x27;t know enough about Palmer Luckey to make any kind of statement about him or his decisions but as Upton Sinclair said:It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his [possible billions] depends upon his not understanding it.

What are we looking for from CEOs? I feel like, if a CEO had made such flatly incorrect promises about something with direct financial implications (sales, costs, the industry in general) they would be seen as failing at their job. Luckey seems comfortable simply pointing out that he didn&#x27;t make the mistake people have accused him of. It&#x27;s enough to say he made another (perhaps lesser) mistake. There&#x27;s nothing in the statement that reckons with his previous understanding of FB or Occulus and what else he might have gotten wrong. It feels disappointing to me.

These same type of statements were made by the whatsapp founders regarding ads on whatsapp(they said they will never happen etc.)[1]All that went out the window once the company was bought for 19B, sure both founders left a few years later, but their statements were false after the sale.

Honestly, it might well be actionable for purchasers of existing hardware. They can legitimately point towards a public statement made by a company agent authorised by his employer and that they bought the device on that basis.The problem is that if Facebook had to pay out $20 million to make this go away they&#x27;d consider that to be entirely a cost worth paying.

That kind of promise from Facebook should be enforceable on court.If it is not it&#x27;s only because the current government judicial system is so full of spam-cases and it is so inefficient that it doesn&#x27;t have room for these things.

&gt; Things change.That&#x27;s kind of the whole point. Unless there is some sort of legally binding contract that says things won&#x27;t change, and that contract can&#x27;t be changed without consent of all parties, whatever BS comes out of some exec&#x27;s mouth should just be completely ignored. All you should look at are the underlying incentives, and it was always clear that Oculus would be fully assimilated into FB.

Palmer is a first class jerk and other things I would maybe get banned for saying, but this is as good and honest an apology as I think he can give. Things change, and it has been many years since he said this.

A lot of people forget just how young Palmer Lucky is.I absolutely believe his post here. He was young and naive and believed the lies from the Facebook executives. Completely understandable and I hope this doesn&#x27;t make people think he&#x27;s a liar.

he seems to quite regularly <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reddit.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;palmerluckey&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reddit.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;palmerluckey&#x2F;</a>

Don&#x27;t people realize they&#x27;re complaining at a billionare and have basically no leverage at all? This backlash should have come BEFORE Palmer got PAID, not YEARS LATER. I don&#x27;t  think Palmer even goes on reddit anymore.

Did you click &quot;Agree&quot; to the new ToS? We told you of the changes and you agreed. Go fly a kite!
--Facebook

Class action lawsuit ending in a $20 coupon for next Oculus purchase.

To the extent that Facebook made those promises to someone authorized to disseminate them, I wonder if they&#x27;ve opened themselves up to refund claims well beyond original purchase dates.If anyone purchased the device relying upon Palmer Luckey&#x27;s promises, that could be promissory estoppel.(Not a lawyer, etc etc.)

Six years in this case. Not too shabby really.

Practically every corporate acquisition in the history of ever goes something like: day 1: &quot;Nothing will change.&quot; Six months later: &quot;All you knew is gone.&quot;

Never trust your acquirer farther than you can throw them

so is this the start of virtual world deeply integration to facebook society?

Perhaps it also went like this:<pre><code> [Redacted Friend&#x27;s Name]: What? How&#x27;d you manage that one?
 Zuck: I don&#x27;t know why.
 Zuck: They &quot;trust me&quot;
 Zuck: Dumb fucks</code></pre>

Well, almost everyone who starts a sentence with &quot;I guarantee that&quot; is bound to turn up as a failure.

&quot;I guarantee....&quot; 
Time to pay up

Could this be the reason for John Carmack leaving facebook

Sounds like the promise was at least made in good faith which counts for something.

Yeah like when the promised not to use any WhatsApp data. And here we are, I give it 1 year before we see commercials and deep integration with FB messenger. Who believes anything they say anymore?

Palmer Luckey, the original creator had this to say over on &#x2F;r&#x2F;oculus:<pre><code> 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&#x27;t happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn&#x27;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&#x27;t make up their own version of what I actually said:

 - I guarantee that you won&#x27;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
 - Nope. That would be lame.
 - I promise.
</code></pre>
Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;oculus&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ic4ye1&#x2F;new_oculus_users_required_to_use_a_facebook&#x2F;g20dysu&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;oculus&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ic4ye1&#x2F;new_oculus_u...</a>

Pretty much exactly what I was afraid of when they were first acquired, and what they initially promised they wouldn&#x27;t do. Looks like the success of the Quest has emboldened the reinholders. That as of this posting, 100% of the comments are a variation of &#x27;WTF&#x27;, it&#x27;s pretty telling they felt they could get away with it regardless.

Guess the extra PII + the ad space are more valuable to them than a slight decrease in hardware sales.

I wouldn’t have bought one. At least I get two years use.

Is the Quest really better than the Vive pro? or the Valve index?

I currently own a HTC Vive (+wireless) and the Oculus Go. I was planning to sell both and buy the new Oculus Quest 2. I will not do this now. Bummer.

So, just to understand what you say correctly, I will ask: Do you think it is ethically tenable to require these VR interested, enthusiastic people to sign up to FB (known to be privacy nightmare), so that they are able to use the product they spent lots of money on? Is it acceptable to force them to do this, just because they are sufficiently interested in VR? Is it in general OK to force people to connect with a third party, which has nothing to do with the actual product?I am not sure whether you are trying to justify this move, or whether you are questioning that it will have an economic impact or really what the point is.

&gt; Serious question: do you really think that someone who is enthusiastic about VR would refuse to get the best headset out there because they would have to create an account on some service online?As someone who had to make this exact decision. Yes. So there definitely are &quot;someone&quot;s who&#x27;d do exactly this.But if you are asking if the average consumer would do so? Unfortunately the answer is they probably don&#x27;t mind using Facebook.

I understand what you&#x27;re saying, but with Facebook it&#x27;s different, because it&#x27;s tied to your real identity, which changes the context a lot compared to other services.In my case, because of that, getting a Facebook account is hard, if not impossible, because those &quot;real identity&quot; checks are obscure: I attempted twice to sign up for work-related reasons, and I failed both times despite providing IDs and pestering support. 
I have literally NO idea why I cannot have a FB account.However, even if I could, I hate Facebook so goddamn much that if this was my only option I would rather not use VR altogether. 
And I love my Oculus Rift, especially for game development.I am royally pissed off, and I will gladly go forward with a class action lawsuit.

Serious question: do you really think that someone who is enthusiastic about VR would refuse to get the best headset out there because they would have to create an account on some service online? I can’t fathom how that would stop anyone who is truly interested about playing VR. It’s like telling someone they will need a PS account to play the playstation or a Xbox account to play the xbox, they’d probably be fine with that.

How to immediately lose a segment of your customers? Hmmm ah yes, require FB for login! Way to go!

you are literally posting on social media right now

Well, as someone who has been social media free since 2015 this really just encourages my feeling that I must not need one. (Even though I want some VR setup )

Welp...I now have an Oculus Rift S for sale.

Sometimes Facebook requires a photo ID to be submitted before &quot;approving&quot; a new account. Seems to happen when they suspect the person isn&#x27;t real (fake name, or whatever).

You can make a burner email account that doesn&#x27;t track you around the web, and other places.Is it possible to do that with a Facebook account?

When you make a facebook account disconnected from a social graph (new email, or unused phone number) facebook shuts down the account.Their position is clear. They’re fucking creeps masquerading any user experience they create as anti-spam.

not good enough. maybe if you only play solo games, but once you play with others facebook will get enough data to get an idea, if not identify who you really are. you may get tagged by your friends or family, connected to a location, etc, many ways to leak personal information. the only way to stay safe is to not log in to facebook

Not possible. I tried doing that once, and Facebook demanded I give them my phone number, which I obviously denied.

No. I&#x27;m not going to give them what they want. There needs to be a lawsuit.

Just make a burner Facebook account. You can do so with a burner email. Annoying, but not horrifying.

I&#x27;m interested in buying it from you if this is actually the case.

I&#x27;m sure this just changes which pipe usage data goes down, but this means Facebook directly gets to use your VR usage&#x2F;purchases to market to you, and they will follow you around the web, because they know. I think that&#x27;s the main reason folks generally dislike FB connect in the first place, but I don&#x27;t want to speak for everyone :)

I&#x27;m not sure if you mean &quot;an oculus account owned by Facebook anyway&quot; - but in general terms I&#x27;d be somewhat surprised if a &quot;real&quot; game&#x2F;software&#x2F;service company (eg: Nintendo, gog.com) kept quasi-&#x2F;il-legal shadow profiles that they actively tried to pair with your account.

Forcing users to violate their personal moral principles, upon which the decision of never using anything related to Facebook rests, is a big enough difference for many--myself included.EDIT: I didn&#x27;t know that Facebook bought Oculus some time ago, back in 2014--for some reason I thought it happened far more recently. I would make the case above for someone who had bought an Oculus device before Facebook&#x27;s acquisition and now would be forced to use its platform, then. I don&#x27;t have anything to do with Facebook, personally. I don&#x27;t even use WhatsApp, so there&#x27;s that for my moral integrity.

Can you do so without accepting their terms of service? They use every data source they can to build profiles for people so accepting the ToS is going to approve use of your information for as much as they can get away with.

What if you are not allowed to make a FB account due to their TOS?  Not everyone can be on FB.

A better question: why does a VR headset require an account at all? Should my monitor require an account? Should my keyboard?It&#x27;s a peripheral, not a platform.

I do not like the idea that I need a social media account to use a VR headset, regardless of the realities of using the oculus account data still ending up with facebook.

On Facebook you&#x27;re required to use your real name. I don&#x27;t know if the same is true of an Oculus account, but that&#x27;s a major difference if not. Of course you can create a Facebook account with a fake name, but then you risk getting banned.

because every action you perform within the account that signs into the FB account becomes a parcel of information you&#x27;re giving to FB.If you sign in to one of their accounts, you are functionally signing into the facebook website.

If you make a Facebook account and never touch the Facebook aspect of it, is there any material difference between that and an Oculus account?

so here i am wondering if facebook would be challenged by a constant flood of anonymous [off graph] accounts constantly flooding in.  how many 3card monte accounts per second would be required to keep the account verifier demon flooded

&gt; ... but he doesn&#x27;t have a Facebook account,...Not that he knows. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-about-you-even-if-youre-not-on-facebook-94804" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-a...</a>

Or, if you bought it with a credit card, you can request a charge back.  Depending on the card, doing that even 12 months after purchase is possible.

If you&#x27;re in a country with half-decent consumer protections, you ought to be able to return the device, as it no longer functions as sold.

I&#x27;ve had a Rift for several years now. I haven&#x27;t had a Facebook account in far longer.I&#x27;ve also spent a bit of money on Rift games. This is angering.

Do we expect Joey Beercan to know who the explicit owner of any company selling us a product? Is it their fault for not knowing? Is that really fair if that is the expectation?The parent&#x27;s downvotes makes it seem like HN expects the purchaser to know about the FB affiliation

I&#x27;m in a similar boat. I purchase a Quest a while back (unaware of the Facebook affiliation), and really enjoy it. I can&#x27;t see myself using it again after this, however.

He&#x27;ll still lose access to all games he owns on the Oculus store.

As a VR developer I&#x27;m really sad to hear this news. I&#x27;ve always been against the walled garden approach. I feel like it&#x27;s only a matter of time before they block SideQuest.However - supposedly your oculus account will be valid until the end of 2022 [0]. At that point you could change to a newer hardware platform from another manufacturer.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roadtovr.com&#x2F;oculus-facebook-account-required-new-users-existing-users&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.roadtovr.com&#x2F;oculus-facebook-account-required-ne...</a>

It&#x27;s literally impossible, in case you haven&#x27;t tried recently.If you don&#x27;t want to send them a government issued photo ID, you can make a new account that lasts 10 minutes and then is locked on you and holds any accounts linked to it hostage as you can&#x27;t sign in.

How hard is it to create a facebook account?

That&#x27;s exactly why I went for the Rift S instead and bought all my games through Steam. So I can sell that piece of plastic and get something not feom Oculus.

$300? Damn, why did I just buy a new one for $600 :(EDIT: Oh, it&#x27;s $399 retail in the US. Damn Europe.

You don&#x27;t have any contact info in your profile, but if you&#x27;re serious, I already have a Facebook account that I use daily so I don&#x27;t care much.I&#x27;ll buy one of them from you for $300 or the pair for $500. That seems like the going price? Contact is in my profile, let me know.

nope.FB can not be trusted. I&#x27;d argue they should be dismantled.Time after time they have not only expressed views that are downright alarming but they have been actively repeatedly caught out deliberately flaunting the law and fucking their customers. (not to mention their Russian connections and their part in the election tampering in the US).Google are a naught boy compared to the actively evil FB org.

Well this is horrifying. I bought a Quest for a relative. He loves it, but he doesn&#x27;t have a Facebook account, and has no interest in signing up. I have a Facebook account, but I don&#x27;t use it, and I certainly don&#x27;t want to connect my Oculus account. I guess we&#x27;ll both have to sell our Quests. That means we&#x27;ll lose all of our game purchases.I came to Oculus with eyes wide open knowing it was a Facebook company, but this news still sucks.

The comments on the original article seem to indicate that only facebook thought this was a good change haha.

... except when the non-bad company you bought your DK-1 from gets bought by a bad company.

This really is no surprise. So many threads on the front page shocked at the evils of Facebook and Apple.All were predicted given their past record.Don&#x27;t buy from bad companies and this isn&#x27;t an issue.

I deleted my FB account over 5 years ago. A few years after that, I tried creating a new one to sell something on Marketplace, and they closed my account, saying I needed to provide a driver&#x27;s license due to fraud. I&#x27;m not giving FB my driver&#x27;s license to sell something online, and I&#x27;m certainly not going to do it to play a video game in VR.

I&#x27;m tired of reading these type of comments. Do you enjoy VR? Just create a facebook account, that&#x27;s not a big deal. There&#x27;s nothing evil there, people are just grasping for straws.

I&#x27;m tired of saying fuck Facebook on HN threads, but man, fuck Facebook.If I ever move my racing sim rig to VR, it&#x27;s definitely not going to be an Oculus.

Valve is also private. Theoretically they have more leeway to make short-term unprofitable decisions without having to answer to public shareholders.

Good move, Valve are gamers at heart while Facebook is out to get your data and make as much money possible from it.

Same plan here. The Quest I got earlier this year is my first and will be my last Oculus device. Hopefully someone else makes a comparable headset soon (comparable = full wireless PCVR capability, like what the Quest + Virtual Desktop offers), ideally at a comparable price point as well... how hard can it be, the Quest is 1.5 years old by now, there&#x27;s gotta be something at least similar in the works somewhere.

I&#x27;m able to play Half Life: Alyx natively on Linux with my Valve Index, as well as other games running through Proton. Not only does Valve support Linux natively; they&#x27;ve been funding development on GFX drivers and things like DXVK. Unfortunately OpenHMD (which would let you use the headset completely decoupled from Steam) doesn&#x27;t support the Index yet, but it has been worked on and it looks like it just needs someone to finish up that work. Not that you necessarily care about Linux support, but it gives you an idea of how they feel about their products and their community.The headset itself is expensive but it&#x27;s the best consumer headset in existence right now. I can play for hours (depending on the game) without feeling like I need to stop. There&#x27;s no single thing that&#x27;s dramatically better than other headsets, but just about everything about it is at least somewhat better. Comfort, tracking, visuals, adjustability, and so on.Anyway, Valve is just night-and-day different from Facebook. In fact they&#x27;re the ones maintaining support for the Rift on Steam, not the other way around. Valve wants VR to be an open platform, and Facebook wants it to be a part of Facebook, entirely owned and controlled by them.

I -just- decoupled Facebook from my Oculus account in preparation for deleting Facebook. I guess in two years I make a throw-away account, or better yet, move to Valve&#x27;s current offering.I&#x27;m super done with this company.

Have a Rift S, left FB several years ago, now forced to go back in the future. I hate you FB. Will not buy Oculus again.

Great, I can now attempt to sell my Vive Pro because this will surely drive up demand for it.

I guess I know what company to not buy any VR hardware from.

Yeah seen that Apple is doing that for Epic&#x27;s Fortnight. Won&#x27;t be able to sign for Mac, but people could still install it if they turn off gatekeeper which I doubt many people would mess with, been a while since I&#x27;ve done that myself since I use dev tools. I think now on Catalina and newer Mac versions even more steps. Used to be a checkbox, but I think you have to use the terminal now?Never really worked with Unreal but wonder if this will affect other games using their engine, not sure if there&#x27;s like signed dylibs and stuff.All this security stuff is cool but in a way more control. It&#x27;s like you paid all this money for something but in a way you don&#x27;t really own it. Like some graphic card company sells graphic cards including server graphic cards, but their driver&#x27;s EULA doesn&#x27;t allow you to use your desktop cards for server use. I guess the hardware being used 24&#x2F;7 wasn&#x27;t designed for that, but sounds like they should deny your warranty then instead of turning it into a copyright issue. Some game streaming company ran into this problem.

Apple is now using the notarization system on desktop to ban apps from companies that broke iOS App Store rules, so you could for instance get your drone strike death toll app that was making a political statement taken down and lose your desktop notarization (which was supposed to be about security only) on a totally unrelated app in retaliation.

Facebook is a private corporation. The first amendment has no bearing on how Facebook decides to operate their business.

This creates a chilling effect which puts my first ammendment rights at risk as an American, and it should be (and probably is if anyone actually bothered to correctly interpret the law anymore) illegal.

What happens if you were banned from Facebook (for example political censorship or other possible reasons I can&#x27;t think of off the top of my head)? Is your Oculus device bricked and useless? I&#x27;m a fan of Oculus, but this is a bit of a turn off. But I guess if Apple makes their own VR headset, they probably require an Apple account but Apple isn&#x27;t really a social network so feel less of a risk, same for Microsoft&#x27;s Mixed Reality headsets too I&#x27;d imagine.Then your purchases and stuff are lost too, I guess as WebXR matures though maybe there will be some great apps you can just pay directly for on the web, but I feel like if rumors of Apple making a headset they&#x27;ll just skip WebXR and force the app store... I know other headsets including the Oculus supports WebXR but sorta feels like it&#x27;s a conflict of interest to their own stores to me so wonder how much more advanced it&#x27;ll get.

Facebook account now required to login to Oculus devices