In comparison to a future where ominous mind control is possible through AR/VR, or a virus is created that not only renders you a vegetable but also transcends

In comparison to a future where ominous mind control is possible through AR/VR, or a virus is created that not only renders you a vegetable but also transcends virtual reality (and is wielded by a vengeful psychopath that has an atomic bomb attached to him that triggers upon his death), or basically any other classic cyberpunk dystopia, I think it's fair to describe Ready Player One's Easter Egg hunt as Disney-esque... almost like comparing Aladdin to 1984. But since we're nitpicking anyway, "the main company" you're speaking of had nothing to do with the creation of OASIS; that was simply an external multinational corporation that controlled the global ISP and sought to gain control of the virtual world by finding some treasure left by the initial creator. More importantly however, my main point is that Oculus's position now is more along the lines of the evil mega-corp owner in Snow Crash, who monopolized (and was probably the first to commoditize) the optical framework with which to access the virtual world. This form of dinosaur-seeks-survival-through-any-means-necessary scenario is not only plausible, but I believe that Stephenson meant it as a prophetic warning for those who are responsible in bringing about the virtual age. And given the sudden shift in Oculus PR's public citations of sci-fi influences, I suspect that they realize that in context to Stephenson's novel, they are actually starting to walk down the path of the evil dictator, not the benevolent enlightened one. In any case, I firmly believe that our virtual world should be ushered in as decentralized and hacker-friendly as possible. Open-sourced with a blockchain perhaps, and localized open-sourced hardware to boot.