Totally agree. I get the deal-with-the-devil that is the free-to-play game / website / email client / social network where I'm getting a service in return for my eyeballs.

But I paid for my Oculus Quest, and then I just paid for a game. I do not therefore want my eyeballs rented out.

Edit: I'd also much rather the Quest platform not become the cesspool that is the free-to-play ad-infested world the iOS AppStore has become. Please can we emulate the Nintendo model and encourage quality games you pay up front for.

You paid for only a part of the Quest, it is the reason I have avoided it.

It is vastly underpriced for the hardware it gives. Some is paid upfront and the rest is paid in data collection etc from facebook.

They have a "unconnected" version for sale for 800 USD and a service fee of 180 bucks. You can see how much you have not paid for in those prices when you go with the ad version.

If the Quest 2 was not associated with facebook I would have owned one a long time ago.

>They have a "unconnected" version for sale for 800 USD and a service fee of 180 bucks. You can see how much you have not paid for in those prices when you go with the ad version.

That pricing isn't for an "unconnected" version, that's for a business/enterprise version and yearly support. You can't use that figure and directly convert that into a value you place on your data or ad revenue.

Your point still stands, the Quest is heavily subsidized by user data on the premise of future ad revenue. This has been a given from the moment Facebook decided merge Oculus and FB acounts into one. I'm just correcting a false assumption that the $800 model is just "Quest -facebook", it's not.

I think there's something everyone is missing. Is this just limited to Oculus? Last time I checked ad platforms do not have a habit of staying voluntarily stuck on just one product line. This is will spread to all VR platforms.

Facebook is getting the blame, but it’s actually game developers who are choosing to add these ads to their games.

I’d be upset if these ads were on the Oculus hardware that I paid for in the games I bought, but if it’s just going into freemium games then it’s business as usual in the ad space. I haven’t even heard of the “Blaston” game the article cites as one of the first games to adopt the ads.

Blame isn't a finite thing, and blaming facebook doesn't reduce the blame that can be giving to the developers. Blame is like the tension in a rope, equal along the length from cause to effect.

Yes, facebook deserves blame. Yes, the game developers deserve blame. These can both be true at the same time.

Out of curiosity, I'm assuming most of the ads are giant in your face ones. Do they do any subliminal product placement type ads too & if so are any of them dynamic based on user data? Might as well go all out & have a variety of props you can exchange based on user data.

I seem to be able to avoid ads quite a bit through tools & life style choices. I therefore ask this as someone whose personal opinion does not like the do anything for views to sell ads economy & avoids it as much as possible.

They are really giant in your face ads yet.

Imagine Billboards in the virtual worlds of your games for now. Image below if you want to see an example.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tXt80SaN80Qsg6MdMlC4fvbHcUA=...

FWIW, the ads are not on the platform level, but inside individual games and apps. For now. (I also despise ads)

> but inside individual games and apps.

IMO that's worse. You spend more time in game than on the menu screen. Sadly this is likely a pandoras box we will not be able to close.

> Sadly this is likely a pandoras box we will not be able to close.

Valve has tried that a long time ago too and it wasn't successful. There's still some hope.

Valve had ads in games?

yes.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/103060/Valve_Plans_InGam...

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/counter-strike-gets-in-ga...

Thanks for the links. That is bonkers and I'm glad it didn't turn out.

That's worse...

Can't even use escapist reality to escape from ads now.

Still using platform-level data though.

I understand the dislike of ads, but not so much the complaint. Companies are free to insert ads if they want to, and we're free to choose what media we consume. I hate ads and would be glad to see them outlawed like billboards in Vermont, but I don't stress about it. I accept it as a tradeoff for playing certain games, or I do ad-free things like reading old books or exercising.

>Companies are free to insert ads if they want to, and we're free to choose what media we consume

I'd like to invite you to turn that around. The freedom that we all get to exercise cuts both ways, it is not exclusively for companies to be active and consumers to passively, quietly accept things they dislike.

Citizens are free to complain about ads if they want to, and companies are free to to respond to market pressure by relying on more or less advertisement.

As a company, you might dislike negative consumer feedback, but you should just accept it as a tradeoff for making certain unpopular business decisions, or you should offer ad-free platforms and avoid the problem entirely.

Complaints are not inherently bad. They're just an effective consumer practice.

> Citizens are free to complain about ads if they want to, and companies are free to to respond to market pressure by relying on more or less advertisement.

I agree, but I wasn't commenting at a societal level. I'm saying that at an individual level I see it as a waste of energy to get stressed out about something like ads in video games. There are so many ways to enjoy life, and stress is so bad for health.

I think it's possible to complain without stressing out too much, but perhaps that says something about how much time I've spent complaining on the Internet =)

You see, problem with this is that we don't have a choice. With Oculus Quest, I bought this headset and it didn't had any ads back then. I have to keep it connected to the internet to download and update games but we shouldn't accept state where they can just put ads on my hardware anytime they want.

So it becomes unusable if you don't keep it connected to the internet?

The problem is that I bought a machine and several games and at no point were any ads involved. Only after they money has changed hands, I’m then told that I need to allow ads into my system.

If the same practice was applied with physical goods, it would be a clear bait-and-switch. (And therefore illegal.)

If this behavior is normalized, consumers won't have a choice. That's the problem.

> Companies are free to insert ads if they want to

They shouldn't be.

I'm not against companies doing it. I'm just against me consuming it. This is why I subscribed to netflix instead of hulu.

This is the logical thing, IMO. The fact that people don't even reconsider their consumption is a sign to me that the real issue isn't the ads, it's people not having anything better to do than play VR. I've been playing video games as long as I've been able to read and I'm happy to just go read a book or ride my bike instead if I don't want ads.

same with me...however, what i am annoyed is sometimes ads get in the way of your net activity and sometimes difficult to put it off...

In my mind the limit is, if I paid for it, there should not be ads. I can understand using ads to fund a free service, but when I already paid, why am I paying a second time by watching ads? I mean pi hole sorts many of these problems out, but still.

Also, cars? You get ads in your own car? Wow.

This only works if there are equivalent choices without ads. We know from experience this is rarely the case. Choice is simply an illusion or a fantasy sold to people to placate them into accepting the current paradigm of business ad strategy.

I have a hard time understanding this kind of point of view. Do you not have a choice to just not play VR? Alcohol and other drugs can be fun, yet they're harmful and there's no choice of alcohol without health damage. You just have to choose alcohol and take the health damage or live without alcohol, ditto for VR.

Free to choose how? We can’t know what ads are hidden inside until after we buy

Yeah but you also have to factor in the ecosystem lock in and monopoly factor here.

I agree of course, but I dont think that merely stating ones dislike on an internet forum will be an effective way to effect change.

So I pose the question: What actions may we take in order to help ensure a future of non-implementation of "the user is the product" systems, with a specific focus on those actions that are most likely to be the most efficacious at accomplishing the stated goal in an expedient and lasting manner?

So how efficient are for instance the EFF on conveying messages like this to a broader public. I bet that the gaming community for instance would have the technological understanding needed to understand how this is bad for them as consumers.

What's frustrating to me is that all of these platforms _have a store_! When I open the store, I downright _expect_ advertising; it's really helpful in that context to see featured, curated, maybe promoted stuff that I'd otherwise miss. If the ads would simply stay put, I would not mind them one bit, but it seems no platform can resist stuffing them in places that they do not belong.

Yeah so what can we do to prevent this? I would say that the main risk here is that Facebook would be able to get control over the whole VR ecosystem. In worst case so that the top apps only would be usable if you had a Facebook account and with a Facebook device.

That’s pretty much already the case. By now Occulus only exists as a brand inside the Facebook ecosystem, only legacy Occulus accounts are allowed, everybody else uses their Facebook account to login and tie purchases too.

The same Facebook account that FB can at any time arbitrarily block and demand the owner properly ID themselves.

A situation that originally was deemed as “will never happen” when Occulus originally got acquired by FB.

At least there is also Valve to offer an alternative that’s more privacy minded. But this makes their hardware offerings more expensive by default, as the device prices can’t be subsidized by monetizing their users.

At heart Occulus is really an android system right? It would be such a shame if they where to grab control over this ecosystem. Unfortunately their set seems to be the most viable path to mainstream adoption.

Valve exists but Valve's alternative is way pricier and requires a computer right? Facebook would be able to mass-produce these devices at a low cost in a completely different way it seems.

So since it is an android system under the hood it would be very possible to make VR apps that would work on all android systems. This would be so much better for the ecosystem as a whole.

Surely there are WebXR standards that would basically be webapps so they would be totally platform independent however this will surely not cut it for all applications.

Seeing how social media companies can manipulate politics and steer behaviour through ads imagine what happens in a VR only reality. This is a total nightmare scenario.

Would it be possible to try to create some sort of campaign to make people more aware about the bad effects of this lock in. Perhaps by finding a suitable chinese device that remains open and try to favour that over facebooks versions. Sort of how Huawei managed to more or less copy devices at a lower costs and get into the market that way?

Microsofts Mixed Reality standard deserves some attention as well obviously. Again this requires a PC and they seem to be a bit more pricier as well. These wouldn't require base stations as well.

> they seem to be a bit more pricier as well

Well, the only "new" headset is the HP Reverb G2 which is indeed in the premium segment. But if you consider the used market, Samsung Odyssey+ is an incredible value option.

I hope Microsoft aren't completely sitting on their asses, they have everything they need to enter the standalone market and provide an alternative to Facebook. They have the Qualcomm partnership, they already have a standalone AR hardware project, it really shouldn't be hard to offer Windows-for-headsets to partners like HP…

I think Lenovo has released Mixed Reality headsets in a lower price range that seems decent.

I think the problem with the PC ecosystem that it is difficult to find an open framework that covers all the different systems.

All in all I am quite impressed with the Microsoft effort. It doesn't seem to lock customers in. There seems to be a possibility to use them with Linux as well.

Also the Microsoft AR system seems quite well executed as well even though it is definitely to costly for mainstream adoption. This is probably by design though and will go down for sure due to economy of scale.

So there would be web technologies that covers most of the platforms, albeit at a performance cost. At the end of the day maybe this is all about which SDK that covers the most platform and is the best for the developers.

>So since it is an android system under the hood it would be very possible to make VR apps that would work on all android systems. This would be so much better for the ecosystem as a whole.

The problem isn't technical, it's monetary. Facebook pours out tons of money to kickstart developers and get games out which is why they have a monopoly. There are few technical hurdles in the way of making Oculus games work on other headsets.

And the physical roku stick I bought shouldn't be changing my entire theme to a disney plus ad.