I can guarantee that no one saw this coming. Social media giant Facebook has just purchased Oculus, the company behind the VR-device Oculus Rift, for two billion dollars. That’s billion with a “b”, folks.
The Oculus team posted an update to their Kickstarter page, outlining why they though Facebook would be a good fit with Oculus technology and their excitement to work with Mark Zuckerberg.
Of course there’s been an Internet backlash over this; Markus “Notch” Persson of Mojang has announced that he’s canceled the Oculus version of Minecraft because thinks Facebook is “creepy”. Original backers are flipping out, saying that the VR company has sold out and are requesting refunds.
What do you guys think of this news? It’s certainly out of left field, that’s for sure. Is everyone making mountains out of molehills here? Should Oculus have consulted with their backers in some form first, or is this their right as an independent company? Go!
Sources – Oculus Kickstater Notch’s Twitter
I think this has been a textbook example for how whiney and lacking of business sense the internet is. The Kickstarter was for the dev kits, and the dev kits only. Once those orders were fulfilled, Oculus doesn’t owe the backers anything. Kickstarter, unlike what many obviously believe, is donating, not investing. I could go on and on about this, but I think Cliff Bleszinski sums up all of my thoughts in his blog post on the issue: http://dudehugespeaks.tumblr.com/post/80832803371/riftbook
People are so dumb.
Both sides have some valid points, if a little overblown of course. I think what really needs to be changed is Oculus’s reason for partnering with Facebook to “2bn is a buttload of money, we would sell to macdonalds if they were offering” 😛
I fully agree that there is no debt owed to Kickstarter backers or anyone else in the community. In fact, I would argue that the purchase represents one sort of ultimate success of the Kickstarter model – not only did the funding and attention generated by the initial launch materialize into functional dev kit units as promised, but it motivated further VC funding and ultimately this massive financial investment that will allow future development of a much higher order to take place. They got their kickstart all right, now they’ve built up some serious momentum and should certainly make the business decisions that they feel are the right ones to keep Oculus moving forward.
Oculus does not owe anything to the backers as said before. But I also am unsure on how this is going to play out near the end of everything. Facebook has a mixed track record in my book. They do a fair portion of data mining for ads. But they do have the potential to make it work but not enough that I’m going to go pre-order one or denounce it entirely.