The Oculus Rift originally started out as a Kickstarter campaign to get the device into developer's hands and raised over $91 million. As a result, the true jump to VR Video Games began that day with the Rift in mind. Games like Team Fortress 2, Half-Life 2, and even games from the Unreal Engine would be created with the Rift in mind.
But recently, a rift was formed in the Rift when Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook company bought out the rights to the Oculus Rift for $400 million in cash.
In a Tuesday afternoon shocker, Facebook announced it is buying hot virtual reality gaming company Oculus VR for $2 billion. That includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook stock. There’s also an additional $300 million potential earn-out in cash and stock based on “the achievement of certain milestones.”
Fresh off Facebook’s $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is showing the world that he isn’t afraid to use his company’s skyrocketing share price to get an edge in Silicon Valley. Facebook stock is up over 150% in the last year and both the WhatsApp and Oculus deals took advantage of that with large stock-cash splits.
Which meant that Oculus VS was no longer an independent company and is now integrated into the Facebook Empire. And not everyone is taking this well. As a matter of fact, it isn't just Kickstarters who have flipped out over the announcement. The whole gaming community who pre-ordered the Rift are now cancelling it out of protest, according to this Huffington Post article.
Video gamers who preordered the forthcoming Oculus Rift, the company's flagship virtual reality headset, blasted the social media giant for gobbling up a product they genuinely loved. Facebook, they said, will just turn the headset into another device for mining personal information and selling advertising.
Reddit's r/gaming section, a well-trafficked hub for online video game discussions, lit up with angry threads where people said they were canceling their orders. "How to CANCEL your Oculus Rift Pre-Order," with a prominent link to Oculus VR's cancellation webpage, was voted up to Reddit's massively popular front page shortly after the deal was announced.
BTW, kinda ironic that the Huffington Post now requires Facebook to even comment in it.
Also, with the Oculus Rift now in the hands of Facebook, one company has opposed the idea itself: MoJang. Markus Persson, the creator of Mincraft was in talks about bringing Minecraft to the Oculus Rift. But the moment the buyout by Facebook was completed, they cancelled their plans simply because Facebook creeps him out.
On the other hand, the Oculus Rift got an unlikely defender: Cliff Bleszinski.
Industry veteran Cliff Bleszinski, who most notably worked at Epic Games for 20 years, has written a lengthy blog post addressing the $2 billion Oculus/Facebook deal wherein he also calls Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson a "pouty kid" for canceling the virtual reality version of the sandbox game.
Bleszinski
made clear upfront that he participated in an early round of venture
capital funding for Oculus VR and said he stands to make a "very sizable
chunk of money" from Facebook's buyout. With that out of the way,
Bleszinski said he was a believer in VR when he first saw the tech and
he remains one today.
"When that dust settles
my heart says that I really, genuinely care about VR and I want to
experience and enjoy it myself, and I have faith that it will still
happen, and it will be better than ever," Bleszinski said.
Many
have criticized Facebook in the past for being intrusive with regards
to the private information it collects from users. Zuckerberg is not
blind to this concern, but said the "Internet Outrage Machine loves to
pile on something like this."
"Maybe Zuck sees
what everyone else has seen--the future--and wants to make sure it's
more than just great games and saw that it would add value to his
business?" he said.
In addition, Cliffy B took a potshot at Markus Persson
Talk about burn by the Gears of War Vet.
Also, it seems Valve is also working on its own variation of the VR headset since the announcement was made in November of last year. We do not know how it will perform. What we do know is that two members of their team jumped ship to the Oculus Rift Facebook team
Oculus VR already snapped up a couple of Valve veterans last month -- and today the company said that it has hired yet another Valve developer to help steer its virtual reality business in the right direction.
The company has announced the addition of Aaron Nicholls to its team. Nicholls has previously worked as a developer at Valve for the last four years, and in particular is known for his research into virtual reality tech.
This follows the news that Oculus has hired both Atman Binstock, Valve's lead VR engineer, and Michael Abrash, another big name in VR at Valve. Nicholls took to Twitter to say that he "can't wait to continue working on the future with Atman, Michael, and the Oculus crew tomorrow."
And there you have it folks. It seems that all our boycotts, all our protests may be for naught because Facebook is one step closer to dominating everything around us. Ether that or the whole VR thing may be overblown. Just ask Jim Sterling of Escapist Magazine.
Works Cited: Forbes
HuffingtonPost
GameSpot
Gamasutra
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