11 ms·

They deserved the backlash for implementing it, and I hope the Rift continues to suffer now that people know Facebook's true intentions. Not to mention how poor

They deserved the backlash for implementing it, and I hope the Rift continues to suffer now that people know Facebook's true intentions. Not to mention how poorly they treated early supporters after the buyout, e.g. stocking Rifts on retail shelves before they'd fulfilled orders for all backers, then telling backers who complained to get a refund and go buy one from a store... They're only doing the "right" thing because they have no choice. They couldn't pump enough money into third party development to make up for the ill will they'd garnered with this exclusivity DRM, especially not with companies like Valve doing the complete opposite -- giving money to third party devs with no exclusivity deals whatsoever. Turns out some developers can't be bought[1]. Who'da thunk it? 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4nxpnq/fuck_facebook_and_fuck_oculus/d480x6v https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/4nxpnq/fuck_facebook_... (For the sake of fairness, it was a time-limited exclusivity offer that was made to the Serious Sam devs, but an exclusivity offer nonetheless.)

Klathmon 10y ago
I never got the quest for punishment for actions like this. They did something bad, the community reacted negatively. If they fix the problem, rewarding them is going to make sure it sticks around. Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message that the fix was pointless and that it would have been better to ignore the problem like so many other companies (including Facebook themselves) do.
- burke 10y ago
  > Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message that the fix was pointless It also sends a message to other companies that things like this aren't forgiven easily, whether or not that's the immediate intent.
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    As a consumer it's a trust issue. How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future?
    - SteveNuts 10y ago
      > How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future? They will. They'll just have to do it more slowly than they thought.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - sgarman 10y ago
    I think a "hey we messed up" would go a long way.
    - daveguy 10y ago
      That won't happen because to them the only thing they messed up was the execution.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  The general rule of thumb is that trust is easier to lose than to establish, and that punishment should far exceed the crime. Absent that, the "ask forgiveness" strategy tends to take hold, requiring relentless vigilance and generally wasting everyone's time.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
  Companies shouldn't be able to get away with things until a critical mass of complaints begins to affect their reputation and revenue. Because they will continue to make poor decisions for the consumer until they get slapped hard enough publicly to stop it. Brand loyalty means something for a reason. Oculus squandered a lot of community trust here and that doesn't instantly return by reversing the poor decision. They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway and didn't stop until public pressure became too much to ignore.
- tdb7893 10y ago
  Firstly companies that have done this before will do this again. Also companies respond to incentives so it’s important to heavily disincentivize things that you really do not like. This level of douchebaggery I think merits needs some consequences
- Zikes 10y ago
  They destroyed their customer's trust. This isn't "punishment", it's the free market in action.
- tetrep 10y ago
  I think for this it is twofold: 1. They're only doing this because of the community reaction/outrage. I want to be able to trust a company to at least appear to have my interests in mind, I don't want to have to be ever vigilant, ready to "freak out" whenever they do something bad in order for them to respond and actually fix it. They're showing that they only care that we noticed them doing shitty things, not that they're actually concerned about doing shitty things. 2. They are not in anyway apologetic for what they've done. They don't see their previous actions as a bad thing, they just see them as undesirable given community reaction. A key component to conflict resolution is not perpetrating in the future, which generally requires at least an acknowledgement of past problems, how can I trust an entity that has solved a problem that it does not even recognize it as a problem in the first place? Both of these issues make me extremely distrustful towards the company as they both indicate a high likelihood of screwing customers over in the future.
  - orclev 10y ago
    Well, they recognize a problem, the community and them just disagree on what the problem was. The community views the problem as exclusivity deals. Oculus/Facebook see the problem as bad PR causing them to miss out on exclusivity deals they'd like to make and ineffective DRM (to be clear it isn't the DRM that they view as the problem, but that it was apparently too easy to bypass the DRM). Oculus "fixed" the problem by removing the DRM check (which wasn't doing much anyway), which they're hoping will also clear up that little PR issue. Once people forget about all this and they build up their market dominance a bit more, they'll take another swing at exclusivity deals in the hope that they'll be big enough to force the developers they want into it despite the community backlash it will cause.
    - zeta0134 10y ago
      The thing that bugs me about the whole thing is, the headset check does nothing for the fundamental implementation of the exclusivity deal. If I buy it through the Oculus store, then Oculus still gets their cut. After that, it really doesn't matter which headset I play the game on. The deal was still a success. I gave them money, and even did it on the storefront they sold the game on. What's the big deal? I still think exclusivity deals are a bit bogus to begin with, but I think a perfectly reasonable compromise is to be exclusive to a particular storefront, but not a particular device. If another device shows up with the right capabilities, and the community is willing to do the leg work to port my legitimately purchased game to it? Awesome! Rah rah community, you've just expanded my potential market considerably, for no effort on my part. The only real advantage I can see for a developer to be exclusive to hardware at this point is to cut down on development costs in the first place. The hardware platforms are emerging, very different, and not always compatible, even if it seems like they would be on the surface. So I can understand the reservations against wanting to code for or support more than one complicated VR setup. But if anything, it's been shown that the VR community right now is chock full of enthusiasts and tech--savvy people who will happily take a stab at those sorts of complicated ports all on their own. I think it's important that they have the freedom to do just that.
- gthtjtkt 10y ago
  Why would you trust a company when you know they only care about you to the extent that it affects their bottom line? Especially a company like Facebook. Have we forgotten the Free Basics debacle already?
- egeozcan 10y ago
  What do you think about these cases I made up: "I am sorry officer, I realized that you were coming after me to detain me for stealing. There's no need! I'll just put these back." "I've been bullying all other kids since years. I've realized that's why nobody wants me as their friend. I will cease the bullying immediately and I'm sure they'll invite me to the big party tomorrow."
  - FeepingCreature 10y ago
    Let's compromise. I hope that Oculus still gets some shit for attempting to lockdown their ecosystem. But less so than before this.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      What's funny here to me at least is how they could come out with a comprehensive statement about how they got off on the wrong foot and screwed over their early adopters, broke promises about DRM, etc and win back a lot of support. The only reason which I can imagine they're not doing exactly this right now is because they're planning on doing the same types of things in the future.
- johnward 10y ago
  If you don't continue to punish them it sends the message that it's OK to do bad things if you back pedal. This is basically Facebook's strategy on everything including privacy. Let's say they want to implement some new feature that they know will impact user privacy. They push two steps further than that they really want. Then when users backlash, Facebook takes one step back. Everyone is happy and Facebook gets more than they originally intended. Rinse. Repeat.
  - marknutter 10y ago
    No, it sends a message that you shouldn't bother with the customers you can't please no matter what you do, and just focus on the ones who don't get so emotional about stuff like this.
    - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
      No, it sends a message that you are still a fuckerberg who thinks your users are "dumb fucks"... and you are. fuck a zuck
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrischen 10y ago
      We keep punishing because we're still not satisfied, and because we can't catch their wrong doing all the time so we punish them to detract from their aggregate gains from wrong-doing.
      - corysama 10y ago
        So, you punish them for their assumed transgressions. That's rather medieval of you.
        nilkn 10y ago
        The transgressions are not assumed. All they've done is reverted a small piece of DRM that was leading to piracy. They have not opened up their store at all. It's still completely closed to non-Oculus hardware. Perhaps you're missing context to understand why people are upset. Oculus has went so far as to actually pay developers of open, non-exclusive VR games to restrict their games to the Rift and Touch only, either indefinitely or for a period of at least six months. These are games that were already in development. In one case, people had even pre-ordered Giant Cop for the Vive through the Humble Bundle, but Oculus purchased timed exclusivity rights for the game afterwards. It's a really nasty situation, and Oculus deserves every bit of criticism they've received. This reversal of a tiny piece of their overall exclusivity strategy does not in any way diminish or undo everything else they've been doing. In fact, it's completely irrelevant for anyone who wasn't planning on pirating content.
- JohnTHaller 10y ago
  When you do a bad thing, stopping that bad thing when being called on it doesn't mean everything is suddenly fine again. You still get punished. Your reputation still suffers. And people will be less likely to trust you.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  Never mentioning the poor behaviour doesn't reinforce the message. When you teach a child you have a continual need to do this, "I don't want a fuss like Saturday when we do this, I want you to behave, like yesterday" then ideally get them to say what's they are going to do. Corporations are clearly like young children in my mind.
- nilkn 10y ago
  They haven't fixed the problem. They just removed one particular bit of DRM because it was immediately thwarted and then led to piracy of their content. It's still the case that the Oculus store is completely closed off to all non-Oculus hardware without using third-party hacks. Ultimately, though, it's about trust more than punishment. Oculus lost mine. And now they'll have to actively work to regain it. This one rather tiny move is not sufficient.
  - haydenlee 10y ago
    All non-Oculus hardware... aside from GearVR, Samsung's HMD.
    - nilkn 10y ago
      Gear VR is actually an Oculus product: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/ https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/
- FatAmerican 10y ago
  We don't all look at corporations like our own children: "sure they screwed up but as long as the fix it all is forgiven." We look at corporations as full grown adults who only get one real chance. Think about all the strategy that went into the DRM change, there was a lot of thought behind the decision, which revealed true long term intentions. This was not a momentary temper tantrum, this was premeditated. You can expect something similar to happen in the future with the rift. Worst case...Rift proves the market and does a whole bunch of R/D that 2nd or 3d generation suppliers can capitalize on. I will not be purchasing a Rift, ever.
faide 10y ago
I don't understand the exclusivity outrage. It seems entirely fair to me for a platform holder to expect something in return for funding development of a game. Consoles have had exclusives since time immemorial and no one seems to bat an eye when it happens. What makes this case special?
- pavanky 10y ago
  Because rift is not a freaking console. It is just a new way to display a game that is running on a PC.
  - faide 10y ago
    It's hardly a peripheral though. VR games are incompatible with traditional displays, and the development requirements are quite a bit more strict (low latency, high framerate). It's quite a stretch to say that VR is "just a new way to display a game," in my opinion.
    - mklim 10y ago
      It's an extremely complicated peripheral, but it's still a peripheral. It's a monitor with an intricate tracking system that allows it to tell the PC powering it its exact location and orientation within a limited area. Playing a VR game is nothing like playing a game on a 3D monitor, it feels like you've been transported to another dimension, but the hardware itself isn't doing anything to execute the game and is still "just" a peripheral like a keyboard, monitor, or gamepad. It's just being fed what it should display by the PC and feeding the PC back information about its location and orientation. That's why Oculus initially needed to put a hardware check into their DRM to block shims like this, there's no real technical reason you can't use one in place of the other once you translate its I/O.
    - ldehaan 10y ago
      it's a display, there are outputs of location data to the computer but they don't come from the headset, they come from other peripherals. if I then plug the display into my video card; then that makes it a head mounted monitor with drivers to output data specific to that display.
onewaystreet 10y ago
> Especially not with companies like Valve doing the complete opposite giving money to third party devs with no exclusivity deals whatsoever. Valve forces devs that take their money to have their game on Steam until they have paid back the loan. That's not exclusivity but it's also not no-strings. Valve has an agenda just like Oculus.
- whamlastxmas 10y ago
  Is money ever no-strings? It seems perfectly reasonable how Valve does it.
- nilkn 10y ago
  But that's considerably more reasonable than asking that the developer completely lock out 50% (or more) of their potential customer base. And it's not quite a loan. It's prepaid Steam revenue.
- jpgvm 10y ago
  To be fair it's pretty dumb given Steam's current market position to not release on Steam. Given that is unlikely to change the "strings" on this deal really don't seem that bad. There is nothing stopping you from also publishing on Oculus store (if they allow non-exclusives) in addition to SteamVR. The only thing that would make it nasty is if there is nasty clauses in the case you are unable to meet the prepaid Steam revenue. However I don't know the answer to that.
rtkwe 10y ago
> stocking Rifts on retail shelves before they'd fulfilled orders for all backers That I'm not so annoyed with. Their retail contracts would have had set due dates with penalties for breaching them. The backer headsets were giveaways right? They weren't promised when they originally ran the Kickstarter as I recall.
- chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
  It wasn't just Kickstarter giveaways, but all pre-order sales. They severely underestimated volume iirc.
wmeredith 10y ago
How do people not yet know Facebook's true intentions? They are incredibly untrustworthy. They've shown this time and again.
randyrand 10y ago
> Facebook's true intentions To make money. Woah!! A business trying to make money!!! How dare them!!
- ldehaan 10y ago
  yeah but you can be a nice company that actually cares about people, and takes really good care of their customers and still make money. you can also be a company of douche cookies and make money, but that lowers our collective trust, goodwill and happiness.
  - randyrand 10y ago
    It really depends on the market conditions.
    - orbitingpluto 10y ago
      No it doesn't. That's like arguing it was okay to cheat on your wife because of the state of the relationship. It's a douche thing to do either way.
      - randyrand 10y ago
        Thats a bad anaolgy. If the market you're in is very competitive, and all the customers buy from "mean companies" just because they're cheaper, then being nice, if it's expensive, will run you out of business. The airline industry is very similar to this.
empath75 10y ago
People who care about this stuff are a tiny fraction of the market that oculus is going for. I don't think the vast majority of potential VR customers have even heard of VR yet, let alone are following the valve/oculus nonsense.
- ldehaan 10y ago
  you must not know many gamers. I think you're talking about your average joe, but average joes who play video games are still gamers and know about this stuff because it's important to them. as far as never heard of VR... what planet are you on :D VR has been around since we could fit screens on our heads, like crt style. edit: spelling
empath75 10y ago
People who care about this stuff are a tiny fraction of the market that oculus is going for. I don't think the vast majority of VR customers have even heard of VR yet, let alone are following the valve/oculus nonsense.
imron 10y ago
Not to mention how poorly they treated early supporters after the buyout You're kidding right? Oculus was very generous to early supporters. Name one other Kickstarter project that shipped backers the full retail version of the finished product in addition to their original purchase. Yeah there was a slight delay, but really, original backers came out pretty good on the deal. Disclosure: I was an early backer. My free retail Rift arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy.
smaddox 10y ago
I bought the Dev Kit 1, but with the move to include DRM, combined with the fact that the Vive seems to better in every way except for Audio, I really don't see myself buying the retail Rift.

Klathmon 10y ago

I never got the quest for punishment for actions like this. They did something bad, the community reacted negatively. If they fix the problem, rewarding them is going to make sure it sticks around. Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message that the fix was pointless and that it would have been better to ignore the problem like so many other companies (including Facebook themselves) do.

burke 10y ago
> Continuing to "punish" them for something they fixed only sends the message that the fix was pointless It also sends a message to other companies that things like this aren't forgiven easily, whether or not that's the immediate intent.
- dawnerd 10y ago
  As a consumer it's a trust issue. How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future?
  - SteveNuts 10y ago
    > How can I trust that they wont try to sneak this in some time in the future? They will. They'll just have to do it more slowly than they thought.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sgarman 10y ago
  I think a "hey we messed up" would go a long way.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    That won't happen because to them the only thing they messed up was the execution.
cbsmith 10y ago
The general rule of thumb is that trust is easier to lose than to establish, and that punishment should far exceed the crime. Absent that, the "ask forgiveness" strategy tends to take hold, requiring relentless vigilance and generally wasting everyone's time.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 10y ago
Companies shouldn't be able to get away with things until a critical mass of complaints begins to affect their reputation and revenue. Because they will continue to make poor decisions for the consumer until they get slapped hard enough publicly to stop it. Brand loyalty means something for a reason. Oculus squandered a lot of community trust here and that doesn't instantly return by reversing the poor decision. They knew what they were doing and they did it anyway and didn't stop until public pressure became too much to ignore.
tdb7893 10y ago
Firstly companies that have done this before will do this again. Also companies respond to incentives so it’s important to heavily disincentivize things that you really do not like. This level of douchebaggery I think merits needs some consequences
Zikes 10y ago
They destroyed their customer's trust. This isn't "punishment", it's the free market in action.
tetrep 10y ago
I think for this it is twofold: 1. They're only doing this because of the community reaction/outrage. I want to be able to trust a company to at least appear to have my interests in mind, I don't want to have to be ever vigilant, ready to "freak out" whenever they do something bad in order for them to respond and actually fix it. They're showing that they only care that we noticed them doing shitty things, not that they're actually concerned about doing shitty things. 2. They are not in anyway apologetic for what they've done. They don't see their previous actions as a bad thing, they just see them as undesirable given community reaction. A key component to conflict resolution is not perpetrating in the future, which generally requires at least an acknowledgement of past problems, how can I trust an entity that has solved a problem that it does not even recognize it as a problem in the first place? Both of these issues make me extremely distrustful towards the company as they both indicate a high likelihood of screwing customers over in the future.
- orclev 10y ago
  Well, they recognize a problem, the community and them just disagree on what the problem was. The community views the problem as exclusivity deals. Oculus/Facebook see the problem as bad PR causing them to miss out on exclusivity deals they'd like to make and ineffective DRM (to be clear it isn't the DRM that they view as the problem, but that it was apparently too easy to bypass the DRM). Oculus "fixed" the problem by removing the DRM check (which wasn't doing much anyway), which they're hoping will also clear up that little PR issue. Once people forget about all this and they build up their market dominance a bit more, they'll take another swing at exclusivity deals in the hope that they'll be big enough to force the developers they want into it despite the community backlash it will cause.
  - zeta0134 10y ago
    The thing that bugs me about the whole thing is, the headset check does nothing for the fundamental implementation of the exclusivity deal. If I buy it through the Oculus store, then Oculus still gets their cut. After that, it really doesn't matter which headset I play the game on. The deal was still a success. I gave them money, and even did it on the storefront they sold the game on. What's the big deal? I still think exclusivity deals are a bit bogus to begin with, but I think a perfectly reasonable compromise is to be exclusive to a particular storefront, but not a particular device. If another device shows up with the right capabilities, and the community is willing to do the leg work to port my legitimately purchased game to it? Awesome! Rah rah community, you've just expanded my potential market considerably, for no effort on my part. The only real advantage I can see for a developer to be exclusive to hardware at this point is to cut down on development costs in the first place. The hardware platforms are emerging, very different, and not always compatible, even if it seems like they would be on the surface. So I can understand the reservations against wanting to code for or support more than one complicated VR setup. But if anything, it's been shown that the VR community right now is chock full of enthusiasts and tech--savvy people who will happily take a stab at those sorts of complicated ports all on their own. I think it's important that they have the freedom to do just that.
gthtjtkt 10y ago
Why would you trust a company when you know they only care about you to the extent that it affects their bottom line? Especially a company like Facebook. Have we forgotten the Free Basics debacle already?
egeozcan 10y ago
What do you think about these cases I made up: "I am sorry officer, I realized that you were coming after me to detain me for stealing. There's no need! I'll just put these back." "I've been bullying all other kids since years. I've realized that's why nobody wants me as their friend. I will cease the bullying immediately and I'm sure they'll invite me to the big party tomorrow."
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  Let's compromise. I hope that Oculus still gets some shit for attempting to lockdown their ecosystem. But less so than before this.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    What's funny here to me at least is how they could come out with a comprehensive statement about how they got off on the wrong foot and screwed over their early adopters, broke promises about DRM, etc and win back a lot of support. The only reason which I can imagine they're not doing exactly this right now is because they're planning on doing the same types of things in the future.
johnward 10y ago
If you don't continue to punish them it sends the message that it's OK to do bad things if you back pedal. This is basically Facebook's strategy on everything including privacy. Let's say they want to implement some new feature that they know will impact user privacy. They push two steps further than that they really want. Then when users backlash, Facebook takes one step back. Everyone is happy and Facebook gets more than they originally intended. Rinse. Repeat.
- marknutter 10y ago
  No, it sends a message that you shouldn't bother with the customers you can't please no matter what you do, and just focus on the ones who don't get so emotional about stuff like this.
  - pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
    No, it sends a message that you are still a fuckerberg who thinks your users are "dumb fucks"... and you are. fuck a zuck
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrischen 10y ago
    We keep punishing because we're still not satisfied, and because we can't catch their wrong doing all the time so we punish them to detract from their aggregate gains from wrong-doing.
    - corysama 10y ago
      So, you punish them for their assumed transgressions. That's rather medieval of you.
      - nilkn 10y ago
        The transgressions are not assumed. All they've done is reverted a small piece of DRM that was leading to piracy. They have not opened up their store at all. It's still completely closed to non-Oculus hardware. Perhaps you're missing context to understand why people are upset. Oculus has went so far as to actually pay developers of open, non-exclusive VR games to restrict their games to the Rift and Touch only, either indefinitely or for a period of at least six months. These are games that were already in development. In one case, people had even pre-ordered Giant Cop for the Vive through the Humble Bundle, but Oculus purchased timed exclusivity rights for the game afterwards. It's a really nasty situation, and Oculus deserves every bit of criticism they've received. This reversal of a tiny piece of their overall exclusivity strategy does not in any way diminish or undo everything else they've been doing. In fact, it's completely irrelevant for anyone who wasn't planning on pirating content.
JohnTHaller 10y ago
When you do a bad thing, stopping that bad thing when being called on it doesn't mean everything is suddenly fine again. You still get punished. Your reputation still suffers. And people will be less likely to trust you.
lostlogin 10y ago
Never mentioning the poor behaviour doesn't reinforce the message. When you teach a child you have a continual need to do this, "I don't want a fuss like Saturday when we do this, I want you to behave, like yesterday" then ideally get them to say what's they are going to do. Corporations are clearly like young children in my mind.
nilkn 10y ago
They haven't fixed the problem. They just removed one particular bit of DRM because it was immediately thwarted and then led to piracy of their content. It's still the case that the Oculus store is completely closed off to all non-Oculus hardware without using third-party hacks. Ultimately, though, it's about trust more than punishment. Oculus lost mine. And now they'll have to actively work to regain it. This one rather tiny move is not sufficient.
- haydenlee 10y ago
  All non-Oculus hardware... aside from GearVR, Samsung's HMD.
  - nilkn 10y ago
    Gear VR is actually an Oculus product: https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/ https://www.oculus.com/en-us/gear-vr/
FatAmerican 10y ago
We don't all look at corporations like our own children: "sure they screwed up but as long as the fix it all is forgiven." We look at corporations as full grown adults who only get one real chance. Think about all the strategy that went into the DRM change, there was a lot of thought behind the decision, which revealed true long term intentions. This was not a momentary temper tantrum, this was premeditated. You can expect something similar to happen in the future with the rift. Worst case...Rift proves the market and does a whole bunch of R/D that 2nd or 3d generation suppliers can capitalize on. I will not be purchasing a Rift, ever.

faide 10y ago

I don't understand the exclusivity outrage. It seems entirely fair to me for a platform holder to expect something in return for funding development of a game. Consoles have had exclusives since time immemorial and no one seems to bat an eye when it happens. What makes this case special?

pavanky 10y ago
Because rift is not a freaking console. It is just a new way to display a game that is running on a PC.
- faide 10y ago
  It's hardly a peripheral though. VR games are incompatible with traditional displays, and the development requirements are quite a bit more strict (low latency, high framerate). It's quite a stretch to say that VR is "just a new way to display a game," in my opinion.
  - mklim 10y ago
    It's an extremely complicated peripheral, but it's still a peripheral. It's a monitor with an intricate tracking system that allows it to tell the PC powering it its exact location and orientation within a limited area. Playing a VR game is nothing like playing a game on a 3D monitor, it feels like you've been transported to another dimension, but the hardware itself isn't doing anything to execute the game and is still "just" a peripheral like a keyboard, monitor, or gamepad. It's just being fed what it should display by the PC and feeding the PC back information about its location and orientation. That's why Oculus initially needed to put a hardware check into their DRM to block shims like this, there's no real technical reason you can't use one in place of the other once you translate its I/O.
  - ldehaan 10y ago
    it's a display, there are outputs of location data to the computer but they don't come from the headset, they come from other peripherals. if I then plug the display into my video card; then that makes it a head mounted monitor with drivers to output data specific to that display.

onewaystreet 10y ago

> Especially not with companies like Valve doing the complete opposite giving money to third party devs with no exclusivity deals whatsoever. Valve forces devs that take their money to have their game on Steam until they have paid back the loan. That's not exclusivity but it's also not no-strings. Valve has an agenda just like Oculus.

whamlastxmas 10y ago
Is money ever no-strings? It seems perfectly reasonable how Valve does it.
nilkn 10y ago
But that's considerably more reasonable than asking that the developer completely lock out 50% (or more) of their potential customer base. And it's not quite a loan. It's prepaid Steam revenue.
jpgvm 10y ago
To be fair it's pretty dumb given Steam's current market position to not release on Steam. Given that is unlikely to change the "strings" on this deal really don't seem that bad. There is nothing stopping you from also publishing on Oculus store (if they allow non-exclusives) in addition to SteamVR. The only thing that would make it nasty is if there is nasty clauses in the case you are unable to meet the prepaid Steam revenue. However I don't know the answer to that.

rtkwe 10y ago

> stocking Rifts on retail shelves before they'd fulfilled orders for all backers That I'm not so annoyed with. Their retail contracts would have had set due dates with penalties for breaching them. The backer headsets were giveaways right? They weren't promised when they originally ran the Kickstarter as I recall.

chrisdbaldwin 10y ago
It wasn't just Kickstarter giveaways, but all pre-order sales. They severely underestimated volume iirc.

wmeredith 10y ago

How do people not yet know Facebook's true intentions? They are incredibly untrustworthy. They've shown this time and again.

randyrand 10y ago

> Facebook's true intentions To make money. Woah!! A business trying to make money!!! How dare them!!

ldehaan 10y ago
yeah but you can be a nice company that actually cares about people, and takes really good care of their customers and still make money. you can also be a company of douche cookies and make money, but that lowers our collective trust, goodwill and happiness.
- randyrand 10y ago
  It really depends on the market conditions.
  - orbitingpluto 10y ago
    No it doesn't. That's like arguing it was okay to cheat on your wife because of the state of the relationship. It's a douche thing to do either way.
    - randyrand 10y ago
      Thats a bad anaolgy. If the market you're in is very competitive, and all the customers buy from "mean companies" just because they're cheaper, then being nice, if it's expensive, will run you out of business. The airline industry is very similar to this.

empath75 10y ago

People who care about this stuff are a tiny fraction of the market that oculus is going for. I don't think the vast majority of potential VR customers have even heard of VR yet, let alone are following the valve/oculus nonsense.

ldehaan 10y ago
you must not know many gamers. I think you're talking about your average joe, but average joes who play video games are still gamers and know about this stuff because it's important to them. as far as never heard of VR... what planet are you on :D VR has been around since we could fit screens on our heads, like crt style. edit: spelling

empath75 10y ago

People who care about this stuff are a tiny fraction of the market that oculus is going for. I don't think the vast majority of VR customers have even heard of VR yet, let alone are following the valve/oculus nonsense.

imron 10y ago

Not to mention how poorly they treated early supporters after the buyout You're kidding right? Oculus was very generous to early supporters. Name one other Kickstarter project that shipped backers the full retail version of the finished product in addition to their original purchase. Yeah there was a slight delay, but really, original backers came out pretty good on the deal. Disclosure: I was an early backer. My free retail Rift arrived a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy.

smaddox 10y ago

I bought the Dev Kit 1, but with the move to include DRM, combined with the fact that the Vive seems to better in every way except for Audio, I really don't see myself buying the retail Rift.