Palmer Luckey, the original creator had this to say over on /r/oculus:<p><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't happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn'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't make up their own version of what I actually said:
- I guarantee that you won'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://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/ic4ye1/new_oculus_users_required_to_use_a_facebook/g20dysu/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/ic4ye1/new_oculus_u...</a>
This is something that still completely baffles me about the "IoT"/"smart devices"/"connected devices"/"whatever you want to call it" space.<p>If someone advertised a device as capable of doing X without it in fact being able to do X, they'd be liable for false advertising.<p>If someone sold you a device, then took it back or destroyed it, they'd be liable for theft or destruction of property.<p>Nevertheless, if someone sells you a connected device and then <i>completely alters the rules by which the device operates</i> at an arbitrary point in time after the sell, that's perfectly fine.<p>Have we really given up basic consumer rights that easily?
A very brief history of Facebook's involvement with Oculus and how this has shaped up, just from quickly searching HN previous posts:<p>- (2014) Facebook acquires Oculus: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469115</a>, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469237" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7469237</a><p>- (2016) Oculus's privacy policy sparks concern: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11410809" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11410809</a><p>Oculus responds to privacy concerns about user tracking (<a href="https://uploadvr.com/facebook-oculus-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https://uploadvr.com/facebook-oculus-privacy/</a>) saying<p>> Facebook owns Oculus and helps run some Oculus services, such as elements of our infrastructure, but we’re not sharing information with Facebook at this time. We don’t have advertising yet and Facebook is not using Oculus data for advertising – though these are things we may consider in the future.<p>- (2019) If logged into Facebook, Oculus data may be used for ads: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770752" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21770752</a><p>From their official statement:<p>> If you choose not to log into Facebook on Oculus, we won’t share data with Facebook to allow third parties to target advertisements to you based on your use of the Oculus Platform.<p>- (2020): Facebook accounts are now required.<p>None of this is particularly surprising, lots of people (even in the press) were calling out how this was going to evolve. But it's still interesting to look back 6 years and see what the initial reactions were and what people were most concerned about.<p>The takeaways:<p>- data silos are always temporary<p>- companies think on a larger timeline than just 2 years in advance<p>- this kind of thing nearly always gets executed as a slow boil. Facebook didn't buy Oculus and immediately require an account and start advertising to users. But I don't believe for one second that Mark wasn't thinking it at the time.
Well this is horrifying. I bought a Quest for a relative. He loves it, but he doesn't have a Facebook account, and has no interest in signing up. I have a Facebook account, but I don't use it, and I certainly don't want to connect my Oculus account. I guess we'll both have to sell our Quests. That means we'll lose all of our game purchases.<p>I came to Oculus with eyes wide open knowing it was a Facebook company, but this news still sucks.
What happens if you were banned from Facebook (for example political censorship or other possible reasons I can't think of off the top of my head)? Is your Oculus device bricked and useless? I'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't really a social network so feel less of a risk, same for Microsoft's Mixed Reality headsets too I'd imagine.<p>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'll just skip WebXR and force the app store... I know other headsets including the Oculus supports WebXR but sorta feels like it's a conflict of interest to their own stores to me so wonder how much more advanced it'll get.
This was the reason I bought an HTC Vive instead of a Rift; I never trusted that this would hold. I recently considered buying a Quest. I won't ever consider that again.<p>Don't support Facebook ever, they don't deserve it.<p>Incidentally here is a comment I made recently about the bullshit they pulled on my wife and I relating to creating a business listing: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959088" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959088</a>
> 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.<p>Ugh. I guess Facebook is making a play to become the Steam/XBox Live of VR. Why can't we just have gaming peripherals anymore without some kind of platform tie-in?
So if I don'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's license just to set up a piece of consumer electronics?
Genuinely think VR would be dead by now and considered a flash in the pan fad if it wasn't for the software and hardware Oculus has done. Valve and HTC just really didn't invest the time and money seriously in the platform and think HL:Alyx only shipped because Oculus dragged the format forward and showed the potential.<p>Just don't get why they're doing this at this point, I'd understand if they had iPhone level sales but although the Quest is selling great it's not there yet and it seems a misstep to push everyone into FB from it so soon lots of people will be turned off by the idea. Forcing the tens of thousand Oculus holdouts and saving a handful of engineering salaries surely can 't be worth the bad press and harm to the growing platform<p>Hope the 4 people who bought Quests after playing mine don’t whinge to me about this.
Quelle surprise, a big tech company making a big tech company move to drive users into their embattled flagship.<p>I take this as a negative indicator of how things are going for Facebook. I don’t see any synergy with oculus other than that both products have users. Maybe that is enough from a business standpoint, but I feel forcing login to Facebook is going to kill oculus adoption, it isn’t like 6 years ago, there are viable alternatives if you want a VR rig. It just looks and feels desperate to me.
I recently gave a seminar about how to use Oculus devices in combination with Unity at university. Oculus produces great devices, but man is the software a convoluted nightmare.<p>A (very patient) student of mine tried to install the oculsu software on a current thinkpad for 4 days in a row. It always failed for various reasons. She used a current Windows 10 and her computer definitly has the specs. She even reinstalled windows. In the end there was an electron error, which we sent to the support - we never got a reply.<p>If you can avoid Oculus, do so at all cost.
Some shade from HP's Joanna Popper on r/HPReverb...<p>"The HP Reverb G2 does not require a Facebook account today or in 2023."<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/HPReverb/comments/ic93cn/for_anyone_just_joining_the_conversation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/HPReverb/comments/ic93cn/for_anyone...</a>
A lot of justified outrage here but I would make a separate point: I think Facebook has made a terrible decision here in terms of their platform play. They legitimately had a chance here to own the future of not just consumer but <i>business</i> computing. The apps now coming on the scene for virtual workspaces still have limitations but it is utterly clear to me that this will become a major mode of work and collaboration in the business world at some point in the future. But requiring facebook logins just threw a huge hurdle in front of that. There is no way I am going to suggest our workplace purchase these and then have everybody logging in with personal facebook accounts. And I can't imagine workplaces mandating people have or use facebook accounts.<p>I guess we will wait to see what Apple and Microsoft now do in the space since Facebook and Google both seem to have (inexplicably) bowed out of the race.
What do they mean by this?<p>> Using a VR profile that is backed by a Facebook account and authentic identity helps us protect our community and makes it possible to offer additional integrity tools. For example, instead of having a separate Oculus Code of Conduct, we will adopt Facebook’s Community Standards as well as a new additional VR-focused policy. This will allow us to continue to take the unique considerations of VR into account while offering a more consistent way to report bad behavior, hold people accountable, and help create a more welcoming environment across our platforms. And as Facebook adds new privacy and safety tools, Oculus can adopt and benefit from them too.<p>Isn't oculus just some kind of display device? Last time I've checked LG and Samsung doesn't really policy what kind of content I'm using their monitors for.
I'm reminded of this blog post from 2014. The predictions made here so far have basically all held true 6 years later.<p><a href="http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-real-data.html" rel="nofollow">http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...</a><p>This action feels really connected to the coming Horizon virtual world thing -- which coincidentally is also predicted in the blog post linked above.<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/facebook-horizon/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/facebook-horizon/</a>
This seems to mean that Facebook's account review/policy process and lack of customer service - basically, that you're the product - now decides who can use Oculus.<p>A week ago, I tried to sign up for Facebook in order to buy some ads[1]. With nothing remarkable about the account or metadata[2], the first page I saw after the signup form was<p>> Your Account Has Been Disabled. You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards.<p>That page was shown immediately after the signup form. I jumped through their hoops of providing an SMS-able phone number, then a photo, and a few days later got this final result:<p>> Your Account Has Been Disabled. You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards. We have already reviewed this decision and it can't be reversed."<p>Again, there's no activity on the account because I never saw any FB pages, let alone used it. I'm not concerned - I cancelled my personal account back in 2013 and never looked back, and other than wanting to buy some public-service ads, I still have no interest in it. I sure would care if I had an Oculus, though.<p>[1]: Because Twitter prohibits or applies extra terms to many types of issue/advocacy ads, and while I applaud their approach, those of us running public-service campaigns get stuck in unpredictable policy enforcement.<p>[2]: Signing up from a residential Comcast US IP that I'm the only user/client on, using an email address at a domain I own, am the only user on, has been registered for 10+ years, etc.
So how do I get my money back, since my Oculus Rift is now completely useless to me unless I allow myself to be spied on?<p>I purchased these devices with the promise that I would not need a Facebook account, and I do not have one..
Honestly, the number of times an acquiring company has promised "we'll never do this" and then "done this" is so staggering, I think any acquisition promises should be codified with the FTC during the acquisition process as consent decrees or the like, and it should require regulatory permission to roll back. And then anything claimed not listed as such should just be assumed to be a lie.
I have a different opinion than most comments here. I love the Oculus Quest. I don’t suggest that anyone waste their time in FB, but needing a FB account to buy VR experiences for the Quest us all right with me.<p>Off topic, but my favorites are the Star Wars Vader Immortal Trilogy, Racket Ball, and Ping Pong.
I don't know if I think it will work, but it is at least worth it to vote here to remove the FB login: <a href="https://oculus.uservoice.com/forums/921937-oculus-quest/suggestions/39317167-remove-mandatory-facebook-login" rel="nofollow">https://oculus.uservoice.com/forums/921937-oculus-quest/sugg...</a>
This is sad to me. I would like hardware to be hardware and services to be services and I don'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.
I was expecting Facebook to sell off their VR operations, since they're not scaling up much. Zuckerberg says he's not interested in any business with less than a billion users. Facebook Spaces was a bust. Facebook Horizon didn't even launch. John Carmack went off to work on AI.<p>If anything, Facebook's VR effort is just there in case someone else comes up with a VR or AR threat to Facebook.
The notion that you need a cloud login for a piece of computer periphery to work is just unacceptable to me.<p>"Want to print a page on your locally, USB-Connected printer? Log in at hp.com".
They should shape the Oculus Quest like an Alien Facehugger.<p><a href="https://www.getdigital.eu/Alien-Facehugger-Plush.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.getdigital.eu/Alien-Facehugger-Plush.html</a>
Because there are multiple VR headsets, the only charitable argument for doing this is to market:<p>‘the occulus is for jumping in a facebook world to visit your family’<p>I can buy that, if they refund current owners who don’t want that...
>If you’re an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years.<p>At least this gives me enough time to sell my Oculus and buy from another company.
> We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though we expect some games and apps may no longer work.<p>Complain as much as you want about Steam, at least they are a games store and store only.<p>I don't know why anyone would buy games from the Oculus store.
I would appreciate suggestions on how to regain my Facebook account, shut down without explanation a year ago. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I have repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.<p>I don't want to create a fake Facebook account. I want my own back.
Was there any doubt that this would happen? I mean, it's always the same game: naïve developers with an outstanding product, huge company willing to buy-out technology while lying through their teeth making promises. It's Edison scams Nikola Tesla all over again. I'm baffled that technology pioneers and makers make the same naïve mistakes again and again for over 2 centuries now.<p>I'm sorry for the following statement.
Deal with it. <i>You</i> want shiny new products and technology. <i>You</i> develop new magical technology. <i>You</i> write insightful and groundbreaking scientific papers. Why are <i>you</i> dependent on investors, publishers and giant tech-firms? They exist because of <i>you</i>, because <i>you</i> need <i>them</i>. And <i>they</i> know that. So, please, rid yourself of the illusion that your product/paper can only survive if you give it away to someone with power and influence. You give away power, for money, that's why Facebook, Apple, Google got so powerful in the first place. It's <i>your</i> fault. Deal with it, you can do better than that.
I never have nor never will have a Facebook or Twitter account. Probably not other social media either.<p>It's bad enough having a Google account and all that encompasses.<p>It is astonishing that another company would require an account on some other system. Now I don't have a problem with allowing using your Google, Facebook, etc. account as a convenience to authenticate your account on some other service.
If you're in Australia: Refund your Oculus. If you aren't able to use the product without agreeing to new terms, conditions of licensing agreements - you are within your rights to return your product. Sorry to those who already invested in developing for this platform. Amazon is the main supplier, and they're usually very good for returns.
The larger point here is that there needs to be sensible limits on how many markets or products a single company or group can operate in (among many other regulations). Otherwise the endless acquisitions by the global behemoths will continue right into techno-fascism of one kind or another.
They probably want to cut down on people reselling their accounts with the games in them. That's what I did when I sold my oculus during the quarantine. Why shouldn't I be able to resell my games just because they're digital now?
I don't get what people over here expected when Facebook acquired Oculus, and also don't get why it is so hard to create a throwaway facebook account. No condescension. Just not sure what I am missing in the extreme positions here
This will probably be when I stop using my Oculus. When I first got my Rift I was super excited about the technology and it generally did not disappoint! I have never been much of a gamer but love the idea of VR. I, however, deleted my facebook account back in 2012 when I realized that it did not contribute anything to my life. Over the years I have had to make the decision between not being able to use a product or creating a facebook account just to use them. Most of those products were mobile apps that required facebook logins. I have always chosen to not use the products and will do so again.
The most annoying part to me is that the only reason Facebook should have had any interest in Oculus (apart from the money of course) is to create a VR/AR social network. Yet here we are 6 years later and no Metaverse.
Call me old-fashioned, but does anyone else find it a bit strange that one needs to log in in order to use a display device?<p>That Oculus had better have some pretty special pixels, if they need a network connection to even be visible.
Hy if someone from Oculus reads this requiring a Facebook (or Google) account for login means I will never buy your products.<p>I also now many other people who think the same.<p>Goodby, I'm happy I hadn't yet time to but an Oculus product.
Here comes the walled garden. I don't have an Oculus HMD but took the risk of purchasing exclusives from their store and running it via Revive. Looks like those days may be over soon.
If you want to make promises to a community about what will happen to your company after its acquired, tie them to a contract. "If you make Facebook login required for Oculus within the next 20 years you owe me personally an additional $10B." Then you can tell everyone about the line item in the contract and vow to donate half of it to the EFF or rescue.org or whatever floats your boat. Don't make promises your ass can't cash.
I already had to tie it to a Facebook account in order to record video on Quest, unfortunately.<p>Quest is a great device, but I don't think my next VR headset will be an Oculus.
Incredible. I deleted my facebook account earlier this year, and I've been looking to get a VR headset. This sort of forces me into the Vive camp, I suppose.
OK. I had planned to get an Oculus Quest for Christmas (since it is reasonably accessible, flexible and probably the best all-around headset out there right now), and how my gut feeling is... No. Just no. I don't want to have Facebook on anything.<p>I might consider creating a brand new, singleton account to use it, but to be honest my gut reaction is that if they do not have a non-Facebook login, I will just _not_ use it.
The FAQ had nothing about developing for the device.<p>Facebook TOS prohibits making multiple personal accounts. So one might assume company one works for then provides a company account as using the civilian account is not really a good thing.<p>If they mandate using the real civilian one then it’s maybe a good reason to finally ”close” it by removing all friends and photos. It’s just a dev account for oculus then.
This is very saddening.<p>The fact that Facebook had not made this move actually had a significant impact on me in assessing their overall "evil" factor for other services. Now that they have, I'm left owning a Quest and looking for another platform to move to over the next few years. I hope the competition steps up because the Quest has really nailed everything important about VR.
I’m not sure how we’ve learned to accept “I am altering the deal” from tech companies just because they have the <i>ability</i> to change things remotely.<p>I mean, what if a furniture company just decided to break into your house, reupholster your couch and remove some of the pillows? (Or I suppose, install a recording device on the bottom?)
What makes me angry is that people won't learn anything from this. The next time something like this happens, people will defend it to the end and call people who warn about it "paranoid" or "cynical".<p>Corporations are not your friends. Unless it is set in legal writing you can't take their promises at heart value. Even if they set it in legal writing it might mean nothing since they always find a way to worm around it. Their ultimate goal is to fuck you over. Their pricing and profit margin are "take as much as possible without them complaining". Games will get more expensive and it has nothing to do with development costs, it has everything to do "because they can so why wouldn't they".<p>Corporations are not idiots and they know how to do something subversively and over a long period of time so people don't notice the changes. Look at how microtransactions in games became almost a norm nowadays and future generations won't even see anything wrong with it. Look at how using FOMO and other psychological tricks are actually a "good retention method" now instead of being unethical, people don't even complain against it any more, they complain if it is badly implemented and they don't get enough of it. Companies selling your data are getting less and less backlash over it with people using arguments as "oh well they know everything already, I don't care".<p>I really hate all of this.
This is a been a problem with Rift from the start. Of course it's 100x worse to require an FB account but regardless, a record is kept of everything you do with the device. VR-Chat 2 hrs day? Virt-A-Mate every night? Using that video app from pornhub? All recorded and sent to facebook.
Anyone remember the site <a href="https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow">https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/</a> - it records all the startup acquisition letters.<p>There should be a sister site that records all the post-acquisition promises that get nuked
Ha this is inevitable. Facebook would not leave the device alone obviously. Oculus opens ups brand new data set and user base to sell ads. Not just that facebook has done something that google couldn't do, they created another successful product beyond their cash cow.
I guess now is the time to look into how to root the console and install a custom ROM in a similar fashion to de-Googling your android phone. There is already enough support in the community for side-loading APKs and the like. Does anyone know of any ways to achieve this?
I know this is a little off... but what would happen if say Alex Jones bought an Oculus device? I mean, they've banned a number of people from the platform.. and if the devices won't work without it, would that be breach of contract/sale?
Not going to repeat the general criticism covered in other comments, but how is that going to work with professional users? Using employees private Facebook accounts in a work setting is somewhere between a really bad idea and impossible.
I've been really interested in purchasing a VR platform but Oculus' Facebook integration has always been a dealbreaker for me.<p>What are the alternatives for a self-contained VR system? I don't want to have to plug into a PC.
I see a VR headset is primarily a piece of hardware. Think of it as a next-gen computer monitor. Users like me expect it to work with any computer or ecosystem (Steam, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). Thus the outrage..
Hardware tied to some account is ridiculous. Good thing there are projects like OpenHMD and Monado, that aim to implement open runtime for VR and AR devices.<p>* <a href="http://www.openhmd.net/index.php/devices/" rel="nofollow">http://www.openhmd.net/index.php/devices/</a><p>* <a href="https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/lighthouse-positional-tracking-in-monado-with-libsurvive.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/ligh...</a>
Amazing, so if you get banned from Facebook due to one of their dumb rules or algorithms, I'm assuming you can sue them for the value of the device they've just taken from you?
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's current offering.<p>I'm super done with this company.
Yah, guess i'm going to be selling my rift, or at least re-purposing it. Not that it matters much, i'm already unsupported as I refused to upgrade to win10 on the machine it was attached to.<p>PS, oculus has been the only piece of hardware I've purchased in the past few years where the drivers caused a blue screen. Thats ignoring all the other bullshit problems with the driver stack they have that can't even consistently enable a pile of USB devices.
As companies grow, they lose touch with smaller market segments. I see that Facebook has grown to the point that it has lost touch with it's ENTIRE oculus market. (Who buys Oculus? Cutting-edge techheads, who often don't like social media). I expect that Oculus will die a slow death unless some exec sees some important metric going down and tries to save it. But Facebook is huge, so saving Oculus is unlikely to make a dent in financials.
Anyone care to guess how long before this happens to Instagram and/or Whatsapp accounts? Could be a year or could be 5 years -- it's not if, just when.
It's good to know before the updated Oculus Quest comes out.<p>Personally it doesn't bother me immensely... however it's annoying that I'd have to review, check and double check all the privacy settings before using the device as I don't expect any of the defaults to keep my activity private.<p>I'll probably opt for using my Oculus account another 2 years, at which point I'll likely have bought another headset.
Talking of login. I’ve just tried to login to EBay app using Google authentication. I have 2 step verification turned on. It now specifically requires gmail app to access the verification code. It no longer supports Apple mail app. Is this a sick joke?<p>The only way around it was to send the verification code via tex. I'm so concerned now that Google will only send verification codes to Android device in the future.
Sometimes I wish Facebook should at-least try to prove us wrong. These are trying times with everyone being paranoid about how their data is mishandled, shared, used and for good reason. What is so difficult in giving users the option to connect their Facebook accounts if they wish because lets be honest so users might just want to but making it mandatory is only going to hurt the gaming community.
I haven't used FB in a while, but are there any real barriers stopping people from making fake/alt FB accounts for this purpose? If not, that seems like a pretty easy way to just not care about any of this to me. (Or was there a theory that FB wasn't already logging everything you did on an Oculus before they started making logins mandatory?)
Pretty much exactly what I was afraid of when they were first acquired, and what they initially promised they wouldn'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 'WTF', it's pretty telling they felt they could get away with it regardless.
I still have a hard time understanding what kind of value can be extracted from user data.<p>Who uses this data? For what purpose? How can this data give an edge to make money elsewhere?<p>Is there a real relationship between data collection and ability to sell more things and increase profits? I'm not seeing it.
That's wonderful. I tried to create an account on FB last week. I don't know why, but it got suspended <i>immediately</i>. Tried again with different info - suspended.<p>I didn't even wanted a FB account in the first place, but now I wonder why I can't do that
Everyone, I think it's time that we acknowledge that Facebook may have a <i>slight</i> tendency to deceptively invade users privacy and never ever keep any promise it makes. Nothing to worry about but just ya know, good to be aware of. /s
Kid who didn't know better changes mind when new information is realised.<p>Not worth vilifying.
Not worth accolades for basic rational thought.<p>Palmer is meh. As other comments have pointed out, don't waste energy on the scapegoat.<p>Complain about the people in control - Facebook.
I’ve been wanting to buy an Oculus Quest since lockdown started, but I’ve been having trouble finding one in stock for a reasonable price. I guess I’m glad I didn’t succeed in purchasing one, and now I won’t be buying one at all.
I have invested heavily learning react and react native and i don't have(or want) facebook account. I will remind this incident in the future before investing time in any thing related to facebook.
I'm curious -- I have a Facebook account, but I have the app platform disabled.<p>It seems that the app platform may be used for managing logins on third party sites. Are they likely to require it for Oculus devices?
Welp I won’t be buying any future Oculus devices. I’ve got a Rift and enjoy it but I have no intentions of creating a Facebook account. I deleted mine back in like 2010-2011 and haven’t looked back.
This was not required before? When I got my Oculus Quest a at the end of June I found no other way to log in but create a facebook account. This account is now only used for the Oculus Quest.
Wait.. Some games are rated 7 years, my kid is old enough to play the games and currently has his own account but he is not allowed to be on Facebook. How will this work?<p>Next VR headset will not be Oculus.
Saw that coming. As a user of the original Oculus Rift headset, I will definitely be upgrading to a non-Oculus headset within the next 2 years (before Facebook accounts become mandatory).
I just bought a new gaming PC powerful to be usable with an Oculus. I have some cash handy from a stock sale as well. I was <i>really</i> considering one.<p>That's never going to happen now.
As soon as I needed a Facebook account to use the social features, I bailed. Thankfully I was fortunate enough to buy a Valve Index. SteamVR is a much nicer platform anyways
What this even mean? Oculus device is a hardware, has some drivers, supporting software, and applications. What exactly requires user to login in order to work? Drivers?
I'm actually surprised this wasn't a requirement before now. I'd always assumed that Oculus was really just a new way to "onboard users."
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 )
I'm tired of saying fuck Facebook on HN threads, but man, fuck Facebook.<p>If I ever move my racing sim rig to VR, it's definitely not going to be an Oculus.
I don't see what the fuss is about. Why shouldn't Facebook try to provide the best user experience possible?
We live in an increasingly connected world, so this tight integration between different products is absolutely critical to a positive user experience. Would people complain if any other company added Facebook login to their product? No!
This looks like a great opportunity for pine64 to make a wireless 6DOF headset (Quest clone)<p>They already ship a mobile phone.
<a href="https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/</a>
I think there is a lot of benefit from unifying various identities and identity stacks. You can put all the investment in improving one identity platform instead of trying to maintain a user identity for every acquisition you make.
I'm shocked that anyone is surprised by this. It was immediately obvious that this move was the only reason for Facebook to buy Oculus in 2014. If you fell for promises, well, hopefully this has been a learning experience.
A little misleading since apparently the Facebook account is only acting as a replacement for an Oculus account. It's not like they're forcing Facebook logins on a device that required no logins.
Andrew Reisse is rolling in his grave right now. This is disgusting and not what he wanted and disrespectful to everything he worked toward. I am ashamed of Oculus.
It's completely expected since acquisition but FUCK. The problem is that there's little competitor for standalone VR and platform's openess.
This is my biggest fear: no longer being able to create individual accounts that are not Oauth'd through social media. I don't think my bank will require facebook any time soon, but I hope laws are in place to prevent it when the time comes. Sen. Wyden, I hope you're listening.
I have an Oculus Go and pretty much only use it for Skybox and nothing else. I hope I can just disable all updates and keep using it without connecting it to a FB account. I haven't even bought anything on the store.<p>I guess it might be time to look at FOSS alternatives for these devices, just to keep basic functionality. I wonder if the bootloaders are locked.
Honest question: you bought a device that depends on an "app store" to work. What exactly did you expect?<p>-- from someone waiting for VR to become a commodity hardware, like a monitor.
Last time I created a fresh account I got banned. Didn't use any VPN, my email was a fresh Gmail address and I didn't use any fake picture or send any friend request.
I'm amazed so many people care. Not having a Facebook account for me is social suicide. Helps that Messenger is a very good messaging app and Facebook the main site is a good timewaster. Make a throwaway one if you really despise Facebook so much.
Just ordered my Oculus Quest from Costco a week ago, and it's scheduled for delivery today. And I have no problem using Facebook account. Yeah, my data will be used for ads, so what? How is that such a big deal for some people to sell the device they otherwise enjoy?