Friday, September 4th 2020
Facebook Technologies Stops Sales of Oculus VR Headset in Germany
Facebook Technologies, a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. and owner of Oculus, has today "temporarily" suspended sales of Oculus VR headsets in Germany. The news is coming today after Oculus announced that all of the new Oculus accounts have to move to the Facebook login system before January 1, 2023, when all of the current Oculus accounts will be suspended. The German data protection law is extremely suspicious of Facebook's behavior and how they handle user data in general, so Oculus has potentially decided to stop the sales to avoid any possible antitrust regulations from the German government. The exact reason is unknown, and it is yet to be revealed, however, the suspicions laid out here may be part of the reason.
Source:
ComputerBase.de
44 Comments on Facebook Technologies Stops Sales of Oculus VR Headset in Germany
BTW in my 1 year using Rift S i have never done any multiplayer or social things, all single player, so connecting to Facebook to be more social does not interest me.
I still get pissed at the wife when she posts pictures of me or the kids on her Facebook page. If for some dumbass reason she wants to project her own personal life on Facebook for everyone to see and know, by all means, but leave me and the kids out of it.
I have an Oculus Quest and I have had it for some time now. Before that I had an original Oculus Rift. Those with older Oculus accounts are grandfathered in presumably for a number of years (2023 IIRC). The Oculus Quest won't likely be a viable VR HMD option for much long anyway as it will likely be replaced with something soon.
I avoided purchasing Oculus exclusive games for the very reason that I might likely buy a different manufacturers VR HMD in the future and thus stuck to Steam games.
Anyway, just like a video card, a VR HMD only has a small window of usability before it becomes obsolete so IMO not a big deal if you currently have an Oculus VR HMD because you were likely replacing it in due time.
The original Oculus CV1 was available starting some time in 2012 (IIRC) so if you haven't jumped on the Oculus bandwagon by now you likely were never going to and the evil empire is just an excuse (a good excuse mind you).
And its about damn time.
It will be increasingly hard to secure data without leaking it and at some point, there will be way more people embracing linked open data than rejecting it because you can do so much more with all the world's data in one place than storing it in your own private pot. Of course, companies might still choose to keep some data private, but that won't be the biggest pot anymore.