Wednesday, August 19th 2020
Have Some Facebook With Your VR: Facebook and Oculus Integration to Become Mandatory
Back in 2014 when Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion, then Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey said that the acquisition was made with respect for the Oculus ecosystem as a whole, and that its management would be akin to that of a private entity that just so happened to be under Facebook's umbrella. Fast forward to 2020, though, and that seems to no longer be the case. Facebook has announced that Oculus accounts will be phased out; come this fall, all new Oculus accounts will have to go through a Facebook one - if you are one of the holdouts from that particular social network, you'll just have to bit the bullet.
The transition will be gradual; starting this October, new accounts will have to be linked through Facebook. Existing standalone Oculus accounts will still be supported; however, they will only be grandfathered until 2023. According to Facebook, they'll still allow users to run their content on these accounts; but any new apps and content that's acquired for the system after then will not be available for usage in such scenarios. Facebook further said that some content might stop working by then, due to integration of some applications' backends with Facebook-bound accounts, capabilities and servers. And thus, Facebook will finally be fully integrated with Oculus, ensuring a new ecosystem of users, and thus, new data on which to base their publicity and marketing efforts. It's all about the value a user brings; and perhaps some social network integration with your VR environments. Because nothing makes more sense than creating Facebook-bound communities in the VR space, and seeing a Like emote pop up on your most recent spaceflight maneuver.
Source:
AnandTech
The transition will be gradual; starting this October, new accounts will have to be linked through Facebook. Existing standalone Oculus accounts will still be supported; however, they will only be grandfathered until 2023. According to Facebook, they'll still allow users to run their content on these accounts; but any new apps and content that's acquired for the system after then will not be available for usage in such scenarios. Facebook further said that some content might stop working by then, due to integration of some applications' backends with Facebook-bound accounts, capabilities and servers. And thus, Facebook will finally be fully integrated with Oculus, ensuring a new ecosystem of users, and thus, new data on which to base their publicity and marketing efforts. It's all about the value a user brings; and perhaps some social network integration with your VR environments. Because nothing makes more sense than creating Facebook-bound communities in the VR space, and seeing a Like emote pop up on your most recent spaceflight maneuver.
50 Comments on Have Some Facebook With Your VR: Facebook and Oculus Integration to Become Mandatory
Sure Mark heres a 360° view of my room through 5 cameras while
watching VR-pplaying Beatsabre. Nothing new to you...I had my FB account deleted as I don't need or want anything to do with them.
Looks like Oculus is off my list too now.
This was inevitable and if they do something similar to Whatsapp, I'm off to Signal or something else.
Death to MSM (Mass Social Media) ;)
The only thing I want from a VR headset is application support, and perhaps a basic utility to configure headset/controller settings and deal with updates. I don't need some bullshit advert-infested purgatory between me and my VR experience. What I want is to start the application with VR support and put on the headset. Anything that gets in the way of that is bile - to be purged, complained about, cracked/reverse-engineered in order to disable it if necessary, and voted against, with your wallets.
EDIT: Well, had Whatsapp, more precisely, since my phone no longer is supported, so I went Telegram from my desktop lol
I mean they specifically said it would be separate, and people paid on that basis. So it should be a workable charge.
Boy that didn't age well.
Not anymore.
CoincidentallyFor sure. Unfortunately the entire original Oculus team has all moved on, there isn't an original member left. So that pretty much dissolves the whole "separate entity" from Facebook status that Oculus had after the buy out. This requirement probably would have been inevitable down the road regardless though.
My first VR HMD was the Oculus Rift and now I have the Oculus Quest. I went with Oculus options because they were cheaper. However, I didn't want to be locked in to a specific manufacturer so while there where Oculus exclusive games that I was interested in (Lone Echo, Stormland and so on) I abstained from buying them. Simply put, I'm not buying anything from the Oculus store in part due to trust issue but I also don't know that my next VR HMD will be from Oculus.
A side note,...
People who have used / bought a VR HMD know or eventually come to understand that these things are like typical PC peripherals. Its not one and done, you'll eventually upgrade to a new VR HMD. Therefore there is no reason to use something like this Facebook / Oculus fiasco as an excuse to opt out of VR,....although a lot of people are oddly enough just looking for excuses.
Facebook integration into everything needs to stop for that reason.....
Yet there's is nothing stopping them from purchasing said items.