Deleting your Facebook Account Makes You Lose Ownership to Oculus Games

[btarunr]

Last week we brought you a report on how you could end up with a paperweight of an Oculus Quest 2 VR HMD if your Facebook account linked to the headset is banned. There's another aspect to this mess—voluntary account deletion. What if you decided you no longer need your Facebook account, and for whatever reason (read: privacy), decided to delete your account"? Turns out, that all the Oculus games that you own, will be gone forever, according to CixLiv on Twitter, who took the time to actually read the ToS. Deleting your Facebook account, which is a step beyond deactivating it, is a permanent erasure of your data on Facebook, which means that your Oculus profile gets deleted alongside, along with your digital rights to all the games that you purchased.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[hat]

That's not much of a surprise, given the last article. I don't like the way things are heading, though. You can already log in with Facebook just about anywhere, and apparently in some causes a Facebook account is already mandatory to be able to use some devices/services.

I really hope we get some legislation soon that stops this shit in its tracks.

 

[Caring1]

I hope they turn this shit around and allow people to use Oculus without an account on FakeBook.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

What kind of bullshit is this? I'm pretty sure this kind of crap is illegal? I mean, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I would think that if you purchased Oculus games, you have a legal right to access them whenever you want, with or without a Facebook account! You OWN those purchases, straight up. The fact that you're stripped of such rights upon deleting your Facebook account, when you already PAID for the games, is fucking criminal!

Yet another reason I hate Facebook. Only reason I have an account is so I can use Messenger to talk to friends and relatives (that's all they use). Beyond that, FB is a damn cancer.

 

[Jeremy156]

Why is this surprising? Account merging was introduced a month ago, Facebook is your VR account now. Losing access to it - whether it's bans, hacks or active deletion - will affect your access to content.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Why is this surprising? Account merging was introduced a month ago, Facebook is your VR account now. Losing access to it - whether it's bans, hacks or active deletion - will affect your access to content.

It's surprising because everyone can see it's illegal from the moon. Germany has already banned Oculus over this and so will other countries. It'll take some time, but we'll get there. Either FB Abandon these practices or it will ran out of markets.

 

[Jeremy156]

It's surprising because everyone can see it's illegal from the moon. Germany has already banned Oculus over this and so will other countries. It'll take some time, but we'll get there. Either FB Abandon these practices or it will ran out of markets.

There's nothing illegal about changing registration service for your platform.
And no, Germany hasn't banned anything, Facebook halted sales of Oculus products as a precautionary measure in light of ongoing FCO dispute. It'll be over any day, and Facebook will either win or will be forced to change Terms of Service - either way they won't get banned.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Sounds like Facebook (with Oculus) is turning into the Steam of digital content distribution.

Don't like how things are turning out with the company and you don't want to use their interface anymore? Well, you lose access to your purchases without the interface. HAHAHA! Suck it, stupid people! We already have your money.

 

[milewski1015]

What kind of bullshit is this? I'm pretty sure this kind of crap is illegal? I mean, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but I would think that if you purchased Oculus games, you have a legal right to access them whenever you want, with or without a Facebook account! You OWN those purchases, straight up. The fact that you're stripped of such rights upon deleting your Facebook account, when you already PAID for the games, is fucking criminal!

Yet another reason I hate Facebook. Only reason I have an account is so I can use Messenger to talk to friends and relatives (that's all they use). Beyond that, FB is a damn cancer.

I don't claim in any way to know the ins and outs of the legal side of these things, but how I understand it is that when you "buy" a game, you're really just purchasing a license to use (within certain limits - no distribution, copyright restrictions, etc.) the intellectual property that is that game. If you violate the terms of service, that license can be revoked. I guess in this case, if your Facebook account gets deleted, there's no way to link the license to play the game to you, the player. Not saying that I agree with it in any way, shape, or form - there should for sure be more than one method of account identification other than Facebook.

 

[kapone32]

There's nothing illegal about changing registration service for your platform.
And no, Germany hasn't banned anything, Facebook halted sales of Oculus products as a precautionary measure in light of ongoing FCO dispute. It'll be over any day, and Facebook will either win or will be forced to change Terms of Service - either way they won't get banned.

They cannot sell hardware and hold you hostage to use their software. That smells foul.

 

[Diverge]

It's pretty simple, don't buy hardware and games from a social media company who's business model is snooping on people, and selling data to 3rd parties.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

There's nothing illegal about changing registration service for your platform.
And no, Germany hasn't banned anything, Facebook halted sales of Oculus products as a precautionary measure in light of ongoing FCO dispute. It'll be over any day, and Facebook will either win or will be forced to change Terms of Service - either way they won't get banned.

Hamburgische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und Informationsfreihei has prohibited Facebook from merging user data from different sources without voluntary consent. On top of that, there is a ban on coupling – buyers of product a (Oculus) must not be forced to use product b (Facebook). I'd say this is a pretty clear red light for Oculus sales in Germany. FB PR can say whatever it wants, but it will not be able to sell Oculus in Germany (and probably in entire EU soon as EC is looking into FB practices as well) until decoupling of services/products takes place.

 

[R-T-B]

It's surprising because everyone can see it's illegal from the moon. Germany has already banned Oculus over this and so will other countries. It'll take some time, but we'll get there. Either FB Abandon these practices or it will ran out of markets.

I mean, it's not illegal until it's actually illegal. Illegal in germany != globally illegal.

But yeah, it's shitty and it SHOULD be illegal everywhere. Germany has the right idea.

 

[wiak]

if you delete your steam account, do yo loose your games?

 

[neatfeatguy]

if you delete your steam account, do yo loose your games?

Yes.

However, think of the Facebook/Oculus issue being more like:
You have a Steam account and a Uplay account.
You decide to delete your Steam account. Boom. Done. No more Steam accout. You then try to log into your Uplay account to play a game only to find out it's no longer accessible because you deleted your Steam account.

Thankfully that doesn't happen, but that's how things are handled with Facebook and Oculus. Delete your Facebook account, you no longer get access to your Oculus account. That's pretty messed up.