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Delete Facebook and You'll Lose All Oculus Games for Good
- TheDesolate0 6y agoYou shouldn't give money to fascists, so...
- cheeze 6y agoWe get it. Facebook sucks. Don't give your money to them. Problem solved.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoPeople need to also know that it extends to Oculus. I can't wait to see these companies broken up. There is no reason FB should have ever been allowed to buy IG and Whatsapp either. Hopefully we come back to a sane view of antitrust soon.
- chrismcb 6y agoWhy? Why shouldn't the buy them? It didn't give them a monopoly
- dylan604 6y agoIf you're not a tech nerd, but just a parent trying to buy the cool new thing for your kids for that "unignorable" holiday at the end of the year, you just might not know Oculus has anything to do with Facebook. I just went to the Oculus Quest website, and as soon as the page loads there is an animation in the upper left corner that shows the Oculus logo with the text "from Facebook" that animates away. The only other Facebook mention is tucked away at the footer of a long scroll that says "from Facebook" in a non-style guide adhering white font. Doesn't look official at all.
- throwaway2048 6y agoJust let me travel back in time and not give them money, after they retroactively crippled what i paid for, shouldn't be hard.
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoCan you not request a refund and have consumer protections if they did change the terms of service (effectively crippling) of what you paid for? Do their terms of service allow crippling changes to their terms of service?
- jobigoud 6y agoYeah we just had to accept the new ToS a few weeks ago selecting between 1. switching to Facebook right now or 2. staying with an Oculus account for now and switching later or lose access when they remove dual login. So they made us "agree" with their ploy just to continue using the device.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoOf course it sucks. That's why I never had an FB account. But Google, Apple, Amazon and any other big monopoly are equally bad, and worse. I don't understand why people single out FB.
- dylan604 6y agoFacebook -> Google -> Amazon -> Apple My personal order of disdain. Top of the list always gets the most attention. Nothing hard to understand about that.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoHow do you measure who is at the top? By the amount of bad press, which is easily manipulated? For me, Google is top evil, by far. You just can't avoid it no matter how hard you try.
- dylan604 6y agoMy logic is that Facebook is actively manipulating people by the algo's decision on what to show someone in their feed. Plus it tracks everyone everywhere across the internet. Google just tracks everyone everywhere across the internet. They are only interesting hoovering up all of the data. Facebook plays with peoples emotions. So in my chair Facebook > Google in asshattery.
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoGoogle follows your every step, not only on the internet, if you carry an Android phone, as most people on this planet. Facebook knows your public data, that you shared voluntary, but google knows your private data: emails, search queries, documents, locations etc.
- marcinzm 6y agoAlso don't get your account suspended for any reason or you'll lose all your games as well.
- Gunax 6y agoLet's be real: they don't care about VR per se. They care about it only insofar as it gets you to use a Facebook account. This is what I see as the biggest overlooked consequence of web advertising--it's become so lucrative, that there is very little reason to invest in real/hard problems. All of the profits (and thus jobs, investment) is in how to tune the ad algorithm. Making hardware is hard and risky. Selling hardware is hard. Writing games is hard. If you're lucky, a user buys 2-3 games per year, Oculus takes a royalty and earns $15-$30. Which is probably about the ballpark amount they earn just from each Facebook user anyway.
- jbay808 6y agoThis is a good point, and also kind of amazing. Advertising is so lucrative that there's no need to earn money from the kind of products that everyone else is paying to advertise.
- Gunax 6y agoWell, I suppose I was just a bit harsh. There definitely are opportunities outside of ads. But some industries are more cut-throat than others. The problem is of course not unique to software. Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> Eg. it may be more lucrative for drug companies to research hair-loss or acne drugs than something like cholera. This doesn't seem especially unreasonable; hair loss and acne, to the extent they are problems, are unsolved problems. Nobody disputes that cholera is a problem, but it is very much a solved problem.
- bleepblorp 6y agoCholera is mostly a solved problem, but the point stands in relation to other diseases. There's much more interest from Pharma in hair-loss, acne, Viagra competitors, and in $1,000,000-per-treatment cancer drugs than in mundane but vital tasks like finding better treatments for mental illness, finding better treatments for migraine headaches, or finding new antibiotics before our entire current spectrum of antibiotics stops being effective.
- ozten 6y agoAnecdotal, but I’ve spent a good chunk of money on quest apps and once they announced this change, I haven’t bought anything new and honestly it has been in a drawer for 1 month. Prior I was using daily. Next non-oculus standalone headset has my money.
- hashtagmarkup 6y agoFacebook patent lawyers will make sure it never reaches market.
- ben_w 6y agoOther trillion dollar companies also have patents, patent lawyers, and interests in VR.
- blfr 6y agoOn the downside, they will also happily include bizarre requirements and censor content.
- saddlerustle 6y agoI don't think facebook has ever launched a patent infringement lawsuit, except as a countersuit.
- hashtagmarkup 6y agoThey sued German company StudiVZ (in US & German courts) for using a similar interface, but swapping the blue color scheme for red. I know Intellectual Property and Copyright lawsuits aren't the same as Patent lawsuits, but when you're arguing about human interfaces they might as well be.
- discordance 6y agoWaiting on the inevitable de-facebooked quest 2
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- s5300 6y agoI've kinda been wanting to post this as a general Ask HN for a while but it would probably (understandably) be received as absolutely douchey... So I'll pretentiously ask it here: Has the entirety of the Facebook Oculus shit changed anybody's view of Carmack? Without saying much more... it definitely has mine.
- rantwasp 6y agochange it how? i think Carmack is a super smart guy that has made significant contributions when it comes to games, game engines and VR.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1propionyl 6y agoNo, not particularly. I know some principled, driven, and wonderful people who work for Facebook. While I despise Facebook as a company, that doesn't reflect negatively on said people, at least insofar as they do not work on the kinds of things that I dislike Facebook for. I would however hold them to account and openly criticize them if they did start working on such things. And I can and do criticize them when they spin apologia for Facebook as a company.
- duncan_bayne 6y ago> at least insofar as they do not work on the kinds of things that I dislike Facebook for. Why do you draw that distinction? Do you believe it's possible to work for Facebook without at least indirectly benefiting the company as a whole?
- 1propionyl 6y ago> Do you believe it's possible to work for Facebook without at least indirectly benefiting the company as a whole? No, probably not. But I still draw that distinction. I'm not a strict consequentialist. I think that people's intents matter and that their inner lives have moral significance. So, for me, that outcome (Facebook benefiting) is only one factor in the moral calculus. In the case of the people I know (and likely John Carmack, though I don't know him), it isn't the dominating factor.
- vmception 6y agoOk Sony, this is your chance to save us
- pengaru 6y agoI'm not sure Sony is the appropriate direction to run in desperation... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8594720.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8594720.stm
- Larrikin 6y agoI'd rather be required to have a Playstation account to play Playstation games as opposed to a random social networking account that has been trying to collect every data point about my life since high school
- marcan_42 6y agoAt least Oculus isn't suing jailbreakers, like Sony did. (I was named as a defendant on that lawsuit)
- bigbubba 6y agoYet. Facebook not having a track record of suing jailbreakers might have something to do with facebook hardly having much history of making anything that would warrant jailbreaking.
- dylan604 6y agoNah, Sony will just install a Rootkit. nothing to see here.
- anonymousab 6y agoNot much to root on the PS4/5, they already control the systems.
- zizee 6y agoI would love to hear the opinion (anonymously if needed) from some Oculus people about their opinion on this. It feels like Oculus is poised to make VR have its breakout moment, only to have some unrelated Facebook group come in and sabotage everything.
- jrockway 6y agoFacebook did pay $2 billion for Oculus. That probably helped them position themselves to have a breakout moment. But yes, it's unfortunate that Facebook is killing them this way. The good news is that everyone makes a VR headset now, and people are writing VR games, so it will probably be A Thing even without Oculus involved. Innovator's dilemma and all that.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoAre there any non-Oculus standalone headsets?
- numpad0 6y agoTechnically there are, practically none.
- chrischen 6y agoYes, HTC makes them.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoI think they meant without requiring a PC?
- Rebelgecko 6y agoYup. HTC announced that they're working on standalone headsets, but right now all they've actually released is some 3d renderings. After buying a Quest, I have a bit of a dilemma because I never want to be tethered again, but I also don't want to support what FB is currently doing
- rantwasp 6y agowhat is a good VR headset that someone can buy that is not oculus?
- kazinator 6y agoGoogle Cardboard. :)
- rantwasp 6y agoi have a Cardboard... but since I upgraded to Iphone 11 i can no longer use it :O (ie it does not fit in the cardboard) For its price point it is pretty dope
- Pfhreak 6y agoThe Valve Index appears to be a very good piece of hardware, from everything I've read.
- Gunax 6y agoIt is good, but it's a different market segment. It's much more expensive and requires a gaming PC.
- chrischen 6y agoArguably the Quest 2 hits this market still because 1) You can still use Valve Index controllers with the Quest 2) You can do PC VR with the Quest 2 via a USB 3.0 cable 3) You can do wireless PC VR using wifi AC using your home router and Virtual Desktop 4) You have a higher resolution headset panel than the Vive, when using it with PC VR.
- marcan_42 6y agoThere is nothing affordable and standalone other than Oculus. However, for the tethered route, I just pre-ordered an HP Reverb G2.
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- offtop5 6y agoI literally plugged in my Wii again once I realized no cheap VR exists. I really really hope an alternative arises. I even have an FB, but I don't want to give them anymore of my personal information. God knows what Oculus is collecting
- tolbish 6y agoRing Fit Adventure for the Switch feels like VR to me. It doesn't use a headset, but I don't understand why that is seen as a prerequisite for it to be VR.
- offtop5 6y agoI've looked at it and it does sound very good. I would love motion controls without actually wearing a headset. Let me know if there's anything like this for pc
- wlesieutre 6y agoIt's going to become like Google for me. I rely on Gmail, so I don't use any of their other services. Wouldn't be able to delete accounts for their other products, might accidentally trip something that gets my Gmail disabled, etc. Not worth the hassle or the risk. So no more Facebook, no more Instagram, don't currently use Whatsapp and will keep it that way.
- Closi 6y agoThe (small) difference with Google is that you can have a Google account without requiring any other services - just having a Google account doesn’t mean that you have to use email. Facebook forces the use of its social network, and you can’t create an email without a profile. If you are inactive you can get banned.
- realityking 6y ago> If you are inactive you can get banned. Do you have a source for this? I know a lot of folks who abandoned Facebook without deleting their accounts, I haven’t heard of any of them getting banned.
- jobigoud 6y agoIf you create a new account and don't use it it's flagged as spambot.
- wlesieutre 6y agoIf a Facebook account has $200 worth of VR game purchases associated with it, that's unlikely to be a spam bot. I think the team that deals with spam prevention hasn't gotten the memo yet but they aren't stupid.
- hacker_newz 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776748
- gabereiser 6y agoI deleted FB, I lost access to Oculus after being a KS backer, a DK1 first shipment user, a subsequent DK2 and CV1 user. I’m so angry about it I threw all my Oculus stuff in a dumpster and lit it on fire. VR is dead for me because of Facebook.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoI wasn't quite as invested as you but pretty similar (KS backer, DK1 + DK2, banned from FB for refusing to send a copy of my drivers license, and now despise them with every inch of my soul)... but if anything this has motivated me to support anything VR that's unrelated to FB. VR is incredible, I'm all-in on this being the right time for it (after many failed attempts in the last few decades), and I think it could really blow up now, but we really need to help alternate brands come up before FB fully owns VR in the way Google owns the web.
- DJBunnies 6y agoWe needed the web. We dont need vr.
- ObsoleteNerd 6y agoAs a physically disabled person who can’t leave the house much, I beg to differ. VR has already improved my outlook on life immeasurably.
- Balgair 6y agoAwesome! What was the biggest surprise for you?
- Buttons840 6y agoI hope you recorded it? Would make for quite a memorable statement on the situation.
- 6y ago
- annadane 6y agoHow do the fb execs defend this? Do they ever feel... bad? Do they have a conscience at all? How is it justified in their minds?
- doc_gunthrop 6y ago> How is it justified in their minds? Well...money. They've got all the user data. Probably did a cost analysis and found that enough people would rather put up with FB than give up on VR games.
- dylan604 6y ago>Do they ever feel? FTFY. No, would be the answer.
- sara420 6y agoIf you just make the minimum required facebook account with a name only, and then never post, add info or add friends will you eventually get blocked?
- Simulacra 6y agoIs there a control for just creating a VR only account ?
- exciteabletom 6y agoYou must have an account with your real information, send FB proof of identification if they ask, and not have more than one account.
- Simulacra 6y agoProof of identification if they ask. Gosh I’ve got like 11 different Facebook accounts.
- KaiserPro 6y agoif you are buying something with a credit card then the company knows your legal identity. There is nothing stopping you have a "real name" account for oculus. You don't need to use that account for anything else. and no, they won't ban you. They'll only do that if you are stupid enough to pay with a credit card with a different name. because that's a strong signal for fraud. And again, if you're using a credit card they know your legal name and a boat load of other details.
- moron4hire 6y agoThey are locking accounts for people who "don't have enough account activity". You literally can't create a Facebook account for just Oculus. You have to post status updates on Facebook to keep your account in good standing.
- KaiserPro 6y ago> You literally can't create a Facebook account for just Oculus. You can, because thats what I do.
- pjc50 6y agoOh, and don't think you can get away with an Oculus-only account created for the purpose. They will ban that and you're locked out. Someone I know had that happen and they're returning it to the retailer.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoWhat's the difference between an "Oculus-only account" and simply not posting anything to Facebook?
- weareallcowards 6y agoThere isn't one; both of those things are equivalent to a banned account. Facebook has no room for freeloaders.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoI find it impossible to believe that Facebook will ban you for using Oculus but never posting anything to your Facebook account. It's such an extraordinary claim. Without proof, I'm going to assume it's not true.
- Buttons840 6y agoPart of why I personally believe it is I've seen how Facebook really doesn't want people making fake accounts. I had a Facebook account and was friends with like, 2, family members, never really used it. Somehow Facebook decided they needed to see a photo of my drivers license to let me use the account. Nope. I decided to consider this a feature, and there has been a time or two over the last several years where that persistent requirement for a drivers license to unlock my account has kept me from giving in to peer pressure. Facebook has helped me avoid using Facebook. It has been to my advantage.
- Canada 6y agoThere are already tons of people complaining this is happening. Headset owners create Facebook accounts which are quickly disabled. Just do a quick Google: oculus facebook ban
- _imnothere 6y agoSeriously people really need to get rid of all these shit, Facebook deserve neither our data nor our money, just no.
- Capity 6y agoEven more OUR TIME
- stanfordkid 6y agoEvery time I deactivate facebook, using facebook login on spotify (which is how I setup my Spotify account years ago) re-activates my FB profile... ridiculous.
- pyr0hu 6y agoYou can disconnect your FB account on Spotify and just login with fb user id and password
- WhyNotHugo 6y agoI've been considering purchasing a VR headset recently. I'd never have thought I'd need to create a Facebook account to use Oculus. At least I know what one brand I won't waste time looking into.
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- vrperson 6y agoWhat I don't get is, why does Facebook want me to have a single friends list, under my real name? I don't mind having an account with Facebook. I already have an Oculus account, and I add "Oculus friends" there, so I assume Facebook can get all my data from there, anyway (including my real name, as I added my credit card to be able to buy games). But I find I mind having to befriend my gaming friends on Facebook, as I may share different content there. In fact, if Facebook wants to become the ultimate social network, shouldn't they somehow offer better tools to manage different social circles? (Work, Family, Gaming, Sports, Politics...). I don't think their play is to get my Oculus data to make better targeted ads. They already have that data. What I could imagine is that the future of social networking will be in VR worlds, and since they want to dominate social networking, that's their power grab (they also work on a virtual world for that, Horizons). But it seems to me their "friendship management tools" are not up to the task yet. I've never digged deeply into their controls, but it shouldn't be complicated. It's not a new concept, either - weren't there "circles" in some network (Google+?). But it didn't work out. So instead of forcing this VR merge, perhaps they should focus on solving the circles problem first?
- Aeronwen 6y ago>I don't think their play is to get my Oculus data to make better targeted ads. They already have that data. Their play is getting people to strap screens to their heads since it pretty much guarantees a captive audience.
- hailwren 6y ago> What I don't get is, why does Facebook want me to have a single friends list, under my real name? It's a neat solution to the multi-device problem (i.e. When I serve an ad to this device, is this a new user or the same one?) Also, I get the view that Oculus is just a video game console -- but I don't think that's how Zuck views it My impression is that he thinks Oculus/VR will eventually surpass 2d interfaces. So, if they can get away with linking all of their ad targeting information now, in the early stages, then it won't seem weird if they do it later. To be fair to FB, this is exactly what they're doing with integrating IG and FB messaging. It's just that no one is really complaining about that. Doing this in the middle of an anti-trust investigation seems ... bold, but it is consistent with their financial incentives.
- ux-app 6y agofuck facebook, evil company. Shame on everyone who enables them, users and employees alike.
- cblconfederate 6y agoPeople who care about VR are the least likely to care about facebook. Its a very bad fit i wonder why they haven't broken out yet.
- pferde 6y agoWhy would that be? Caring about VR and Facebook are entirely orthogonal to one another. It's like saying that people who like the color yellow are unlikely to like chocolate.
- cblconfederate 6y agoThey 're certainly not orthogonal, at least that's my experience. VR fans are technical, mostly gamers, congregating in platforms other than facebook (discord twitch etc). Not the usual self-obsessed facebook/instagram crowd
- pferde 6y agoYou must be doing facebook wrong. Millions of people use it to just keep in touch with their family and friends, and couldn't care less about the self-obsessed "influencer" crowd or collecting "likes", or any of that childish stuff.
- jsnell 6y agoUnifying everything under the same account infrastructure is simply the right engineering choice. There's no need to try to explain this with ridiculous conspiracy theories about how the only reason Facebook pumped billions into VR to get a million people to create a FB account. Account security benefits massively from economies of scale, both in the sense of infrastructure and operationally. Oculus did not have that scale. There's probably a couple of million Oculus accounts vs. ten billion Facebook ones. The Oculus accounts are probably a similar PR nightmare waiting to happen, like the Ring accounts were for Amazon or the Nest accounts for Google. In concrete terms, Facebook accounts will have better 2FA implementation than Oculus. They'll have better protection against credential stuffing or enumeration attacks. It's less likely there's going to be some kind of an authentication bypass, or a bug where plaintext passwords are getting logged, etc. Basically, for Facebook to continue using the Oculus account system rather than migrating off would be irresponsible, and the main surprise is that they've taken this long post-acquisition to do it. FWIW, I've never had a Facebook account, despite some minor social pressure to get one for like the last 13 years. But that's just because none of their services has ever seemed interesting in any way. But I was totally OK creating one a few days ago after buying the Quest 2. The only problem is that at least for now a Facebook account == Facebook social network profile. I wish they were more like Google or Microsoft accounts in that a) having an account doesn't imply use of any particular Facebook product, b) they allow use of separate profiles tied to the same main account (e.g. a MS account can be associated with Xbox gamer tags for gaiming, a Google account with Youtube brand accounts for posting videos). But that's something they haven't needed until now, I'm sure it'll come.
- hetspookjee 6y agoIf you make a Facebook account just for just the purpose of playing Quest 2, you will eventually be asked to provide ID verification of your account, or it will simply be locked. I am unsure if you find this an acceptable compromise, or something you thought about when you recently bought Quest 2, but I am very sure I do not find this acceptable in any sort of way. There's just no excuse for the need of ID verification just to be eligible to play a game on a device. Regarding your point of unifying it under a single account, sure, but does that account need so much data just to function? And on the other hand, why not just be able to create a partial account? A facebook account is so much more than just some random account, why would I need such an intricate account to play a game? So in short, yes in a technical way it's logical, but in every other way it's like shooting a mosquito with a bazooka.
- cmsonger 6y agoIMO, anti-trust laws should punish this.
- jp555 6y agoI love my Quest 2. It's amazing. I've used Facebook a lot in the past, but through actions like this I find I'm already using my FB account like I do LinkedIn - a utility I have to use but barely use.
- holoduke 6y agoFacebook's leadership team including Zuckerberg are not normal people. Insanity and lack of healthy human thinking. The whole company should be taken over by normal people who understands the impact and responsibilities of a service like Facebook. The business model have to be changed back to what it suppose to be: a sharing platform for friends and family. Not an ads driven morally ill platform. Best would be to forbid the entire platform. I am pushing various people here in the EU to move towards that direction.
- trymas 6y ago.. and you can lose your FB account out of the blue too. One morning you can get a notification that your FB account is blocked "due to suspicious" activity (apparently, no activity is suspicious activity too :) ). Unless you send a picture of government issued ID, that they "promise" to delete in 30 days. Thanks, but no, thanks. Fortunately, for me it was good thing. No more pointless lurking, drama and being depressed by everyone else's perfectly portrayed lives.
- tdsm 6y agoAlso, Delete Netflix and You'll Lose All Netflix Content for Good
- moron4hire 6y agoWe need to consider the very real possibility that the people defending Facebook here are shill accounts. Facebook's privacy abuses are well known. Facebook's raison d'être for owning Oculus is well known. These folks are trying to convince us that Facebook is not going to try to do with Oculus what they have already done with all of their other products and have explicitly said they will do with VR.
- corytheboyd 6y agoWaiting for the day they try forcing this on the Rift S, but maybe they won’t bother because their support for it was already shit. I don’t think it has ever just worked the first time I have plugged it in, and the only palatable solution is to install the tray tool to restart Facebook’s own trash software. If you search for connectivity issues you find forum post after forum post of people getting the runaround from support. Facebook just releases broken shit and don’t care. A social media website company does not have the discipline to sell and maintain hardware, goes I’m not surprised. I’m ultimately not that upset, the Rift S is good for the price and was my first HMD. I’ll take my money elsewhere when it’s time to upgrade, but I think I’ll be happy with this for a while yet as pretty much all I play is beatsaber lol
- chansiky 6y agoThey clearly believe the benefits they gain from requiring facebook outweighs the benefits of keeping users who will leave. Considering their revenue model, its not a surprise. But that sort of means that they also better believe they can build tech that is better than their competitors who wont have this drawback.