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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 i

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.

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.