I can't imagine the Oculus team ever reaching their fundraising goal if backers knew the founders were going to sellout before ever reaching the vision they shared to get people to back it in the first place.

EDIT: Notch seems to have just confirmed the postulation above in his latest blog post:

"I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-...

Just like facebook's Frankensteinian monstrous mish-mash of consumer/content/advertiser/publisher crowd-funding in its current state is a mish-mash that ends up meaning nothing in the end. You are not an equity partner, you really have no say in how decisions are made, you are not a lender, you are and are not a client (depending on whether they actually give you the damn 'thing' or not due to a host of reasons, going bust, running out of money, fraud, etc.)

I'm sorry, but where is the stupidity? Kickstarter is a specific tool available to founders/innovators/creatives that allows us to reach a community of supporters quickly and efficiently.

Like all tools, it has a specific way that it operates, and to keep such a new thing from spinning out of control, it is relatively simple and has few rules. Fortunately, we are all made aware of this going in. Backers generally pledge to receive a product. The creator benefits from early access to cash which allows them to build their product.

This is what happened with Oculus, and they have already delivered vouchers to all backers which they could have redeemed for the original developer version from last year, the current developer version coming in July, or the consumer version still definitely coming towards the end of this year.

I fail to see how Oculus gaining a parent company somehow "lays bare the sheer stupidity" of the system Kickstarter provides. People pledged for a high quality VR device, and Oculus promised to change the world. It seems these things will happen.

One of the most compelling opportunities provided by virtual reality is not just gaming, but it's capability to put us somewhere else, including in a virtual room with our loved ones. Virtual reality enables an interaction that humans have never before been able to experience - the ability to hang out in a virtual space with another person.

Facebook, whose primary goal has generally been to provide a platform for connecting humans to eachother, clearly sees the value in VR's ability to provide this new experience for us. As such, they've used their purchasing power to buy a stake in the VR game and help grow this new technology. Some day, we will be able to hang out with out loved ones, visit the doctor, or join a game with friends all in a shared virtual space.

This is a future made possible by the Kickstarter model, which enabled Oculus to get the start they needed to commercialize Virtual Reality.

Tell me again how that is stupid?

What strikes me as stupid is the huge number of people decrying this move as some kind of perversion of the original Kickstarter promise, or some kind of bait and switch. It seems to be the logical progression of a company creating a ground-breaking new human interface device. Should they stay independent indefinitely just because they were crowd funded? I don't see how that would make any sense, or why such a modification to the Kickstarter model would be any kind of improvement.

When you contribute -- note contribute, but invest -- to a Kickstarter campaign, you're buying into the perk you get and pretty much nothing else.

I can understand being upset that the company didn't do what you hoped, but considering it an investment is a bit of an overestimation.

Sure, you can hope that the recipient of your contribution will use it in the way you want, and will hold the same values and plan for the company that you do, but in reality, that's an entirely unreasonable expectation to have.

The thing is, though... I don't see this particular example as the Oculus founders acting in bad faith. They made a business decision that made sense for them and their product. Sure, they get a big payday, but I bet they also believe that this is the great (maybe even best) way to make their product successful. The fact that you or I or any of the contributors might disagree is, well, irrelevant.

Personally, I think a lot of people are making a big deal over something that... isn't. There's a lot of hate for Facebook around, some of it justified, some not. The knee-jerk reaction of a FB acquisition being bad is getting quite tiring to me. Why not wait and see how it goes? FB at least seems to have a better track record of successful acquisitions that don't destroy the acquiree than Google does.

Oculus benefited greatly from selling itself as the future of VR gaming. That was the image they cultivated, that is why their Kickstarter was so successful. That is why people contributed. The Facebook deal most likely means a big shift of focus to social VR. There's a big difference between hoping a company will share your personal values when it gets successful, and being sold a particular plan which is then abandoned in favour of a big payoff.

Me, I think Kickstarter is to fault for being sold as a tool for contributors. You go to kickstarter.com, it's like a shopping mall of the future. For what Kickstarter say they are, they should be a plugin that companies get to put on their website or something, not something that gets marketed to consumers.

Kickstarter is not investment. I've never invested money in a company, but I've invested labor in exchange for shares; I was, thus, a stakeholder, and had a say in a number of decisions the company made.

If I buy a product off a store, a pair of sneakers, and they turn out to be shitty and fall to pieces in a week, I'm entitled to my money back or a working pair of sneakers. However, when you fund through Kickstarter something that says "Oh Hai Future Shoes", you're not buying sneakers.

If I invest in a company and they turn out to be using child labor, I can try and wield whatever powers I have in my shares to stop that practice. I can also divest and shame. However, when you fund "Oh Hai Future Shoes" through Kickstarter, you're not investing. You're not buying a vision of the future of shoes. At best, you can expect your rewards (usually a prototype of said sneakers) to be delivered.

But if they sell out to Nike shortly thereafter? And you thought you had an emotional connection?

This is why I kind of fault Kickstarter. It's just too weird a model; it allows fine, smart people like yourself to make unwarranted leaps of logic so that money flows that otherwise might not happen are made common and large.

At its core, understood as FAQs explain -- but not as the website in general is structured -- Kickstarter is a tool for business. Why does it have a shopping mall-like website? Why isn't it just an extension of tip jar tools for webmasters?

(I'm reminded of the Alec Baldwin movie with Jack Lemmon where he's screaming through a pep talk -- "TO GET THEM TO SIGN ON THE LINE WHICH IS DOTTED!!". This is what Kickstarter does.)

Has this ever happened? I was under the impression that the funds raised through Kickstarter are spent on the kickstarted projects. If after spending the money, the project "fails", how can there be a refund?

Only if the projects backed aren't Free and Open-Source.

taking a stand against Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and now Oculus ?

I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus.

Anyway, Notch has been infamously known for his quick rants (see the "youtuber he insulted" issue)

Like google? Or Microsoft?

I was hoping for something more personal out of Oculus. Something I wouldn't have to think about sharing with my great aunts and the wider public via the NSA

But if you really desire more convincing, all of those companies have large existing business units devoted to selling consumer devices or licensing things to people selling consumer devices. Those business units have executives, budgets, reporting structures, etc. It is very unlikely any of those companies would buy Oculus to run it as an autonomous unit, like Facebook is saying they will do with Oculus for now.

"A logical element or segment of a company (such as accounting, production, marketing) representing a specific business function, and a definite place on the organizational chart, under the domain of a manager. Also called department, division, or a functional area."

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/business-unit.h...

It's a term that seems so totally generic that I feel like you have to work really, really hard to find an organization at scales far, far below where Apple operates to find a company that wouldn't fit that description (Valve?)

But that misses the point -- the point is that Apple has SOME existing organizational structure around "selling consumer electronics," and that an Apple-purchased Occulus would likely fall into that structure. I don't think there's any evidence of a company that Apple bought and let run on its own for an extended period of time, is there?

I have generally seen definitions of functional units being responsible for a function, without reference to profit or loss. Business units generally refer to a notionally divisible unit from which income, expenses, and thus profits can be measured. By this definition, Apple has only one business unit, the entire enterprise.

Again, this doesn't detract from your point, it amplifies it! Apple really would never preserve a purchased business and leave it independent. It doesn't even have business units, the structure that might, if you're naive, allow for such a thing!

An interesting discussion of Apple's functional structure:

http://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-function...

Never say never. Especially with a company that likes to surprise...

Microsoft ? They already have a gaming branch so why not, but for the same reason as Google, people wouldn't have noticed it much.

But Facebook ? Everybody around me is going to talk about it, even non-gamers. You have no idea how huge this is for VR.

As sad as it sounds, thats what makes business in America

Let's wait a while before making such bold statements, shall we? It may have been the best thing that could happen to Instagram, but decent technology (good enough to attract John Carmack) might have had a brighter future without a new owner with possibly different interests.

Why couldn't Oculus have been it's own company?

Facebook made it without a partner.

The two really don't have anything to do with each other. There's no rule saying that if someone comes out winning in business deal, then everyone comes out winning in that business deal.

For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.

Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack.

EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it is to watch this video fullscreen and try to imagine any way that Facebook could add to the experience, or at least not detract from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s

It's hard to.

That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.

Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976

EDIT: By "giant MMO" I mean "metaverse from Snowcrash," not "video game."

I don't know exactly what Oculus's plan was but it'd be foolish to ignore this obvious application, and that certainly seems to be where Mark Zuckerberg sees the value in it, if we are to take his speech on the conference call at face value.

Zuck probably has some tricks up his sleeve to accomplish this goal. And he's been able to learn from G+ about how not to go about it.

Whether the Metaverse is cool will make or break its popularity. It's what made Facebook's.

The coming years are going to be pretty interesting.

Since when was OculusVR supposed to build the metaverse? I thought they only wanted to build the tools to access it.

Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

In both cases there are potentially large payoffs in the long term. But they're extremely high price tags for decade-plus plays in which the acquired company has little to no particular proprietary technological edge.

Now, that old LAMP Apache+mpm_worker setup, that one was bad.

They have a lot of XP in building real physical shit these days.

Scaling traffic is a non-issue for them.

Also worth noting, the head of OCP left Facebook today. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2111680/open-compute-project-...

My point is that they are not strangers to manufacturing tech...

Facebook phone, anyone?

There's a world of difference between a potential item, like the FB phone and an actual, demonstrated item, like the Oculus Rift, so they might get some points there.

But their record ATM is non-existent, AFAIK.

Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc...

It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook.

EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).

The point is that, while Facebook may be able to do hardware, servers is not a good example.

Disclosure: my team at Sanmina has been responsible for delivering the test automation & integration software for the rack assembly & test operation for Facebook.

For that matter, Google itself doesn't build anything at scale, either. Why would they? They outsource all their high-vol manufacturing to the same EMS companies everyone else uses (Quanta, Compal, Foxconn, Flextronics, Sanmina, Celestica, Jabil, Pegatron, Benchmark, Plexus and a handful of others).

Made in China, as far as I can find out. They don't make hardware any more than Apple does.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/

If you're gonna spend $2B to buy something you want, better if you can get someone else to foot the bill.

It's the investors who will get a lot of Facebook's money. Also, Facebook's stock dropped yesterday in reaction to the move and it's being reported that the deal is worth $200 million less as a result. [3]

The B round investors held it for such a short time it's almost like they flipped it to Facebook.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift

[2] http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/12/oculus-vr-raises-75m-from-...

[3] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/03/26/facebook-sha...

This is not a "deal". Facebook will own the company and can (rightfully) be expected to do whatever they want with it.

I have the DK1, and I ordered the DK2 not even a week ago, I've been active in tinkering with Oculus for a while now and even did some Twitch.tv casts of BF3, DayZ, etc. and other games running through TriDef or VorpX. I'm about to start working on a project allowing MS Kinect usage to be broadcast in an Oculus compatible format for web consumption by Oculus users. So I'm pretty "in touch" with the tech at this point.

I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. I don't think you'll have 3D oculus web cam video calls or friend requests popping up in your flight sim, that's just rampant and misguided speculation.

If I had a choice about WHO bought Oculus the top of the list would be Valve. They already have Carmack, having Newell in the mix would be amazing and ensure the tech was in good hands. Facebook or Google would be next in line, and waaaaay down at the bottom of the list would be Sony, Microsoft, or EA (I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it).

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. If I was a company that made it big in the social boom and IPO'd but was facing a shrinking userbase on my life blood product, you better bet your ass I'd utilize my resources to diversify my business. Keeping your all your eggs in a single basket is a historically bad idea.

edit: also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK. Which I would consider FB pretty okay at... I won't say good... but okay will suffice, especially considering backwards compatibility for hardware/software of this type isn't a big concern.

Calling anyone who disagrees with you an idiot and an embarrassment isn't good.

The central issue is that when Facebook begins to lose relevance, Zuck is going to yank the reins on Oculus as hard as possible to ensure Facebook stays relevant. You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration.

VR is in its nascent stages, and Oculus has been synonymous with VR. Now instead of VR having a strong an independent company with Carmack near the helm, "VR" is a subservient division of Facebook.

Whether that turns out to be a good thing, well, time will tell. But to call people "ignorant idiots" for being worried is a little extreme, to say the least.

EDIT: You're also mistaken about this part (as I was):

also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK

The scaling crisis is software, not hardware. They appear to be planning some kind of Oculus VR MMO based on Carmack's tweets. See here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231

This is exactly what comes to mind. Seeing how Google transformed post Eric Schmidt, makes me consider that even IF Zuck has absolutely all the good intentions of letting Oculus do its own thing, CEOs change, and corporations tend to get worse as they grow older (IMO), for some reason.

It could be all good, Oculus could be a great hit, a wonderful platform, all that everyone hopes. Then comes a new CEO with a grand U-turn vision, pulls the rug from beneath their feet and absoluty sinks the ship.

There's just no security, if Oculus kept control, than great, the company is the product, it depends on it to carry on. But Facebook just has the product, its just a leverage, second grade citizen within the corp.

I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.

- Origin requirements

- Online requirements

- SimCity debacle

- buggy release after buggy release

- customer support is... turrible

I could go on and on, I don't even buy their stuff anymore, BF3 is and was the last of their games I plan on owning.

A question: does Facebook need to only be facebook.com?

After all, there are plenty of examples in other industries of companies doing unrelated things and making a go of it. Consider Hitachi TVs and heavy equipment.

Facebook could launch Facebook Games to coincide with Oculus' consumer launch, providing a Steam-like service to pick up and play VR games, day one. Integration from this standpoint could be as innocuous as "Log in with your Facebook account" along side "Log in with your Google account" or "create an account".

ah.. 1 minute? I thought there was 1 month old tweet that mentioned FB (and obviously overlooked)

It happens so often many of us just laugh if not smirk the whole time we watch the familiar process play itself out. Eventually they learn they are not the center of the universe.

Or, yeah, angst.

The core services sure but why wouldn't it be like FB in general(full of third party apps and games)?

There's a reason people only integrate with FB to try and take traffic, and even then they become the customer paying for ads. It's not worth your time.

In any case, if making awesome VR a reality was Oculus' vision, they can make a pretty good case for that vision being well served by the resources of Facebook.

At the end of the day, what are people afraid of? That the newest action games won't be playable on Rift? I just don't see how people figure Facebook might ruin this product.

That said, I personally don't know if Facebook is going to mess up Oculus. I imagine that what people are worried about is that Facebook will push for Oculus to be used for social VR and will largely ignore games. VR gaming requires high quality sensory experience in a dynamic environment with fast player movements. Social VR is probably going to be way, way more static, (but will have other demands like monitoring body position, face scanning, etc.)

To make the product valuable, it has to be a good platform which other companies can use.

Facebook has ruined many companies that relied on the facebook api to build their businesses. Sometimes facebook reimplemented someones else idea and then remove features from the api to kill the original company.

Making a product based on the Oculus rift platform is a high risk operation. Facebook has already ruined the trust.

It seems to be ignored but the massive pockets, infrastructure, and engineering at FB will allow Occulus to have access to much much more than they could have achieved previously.

At the end of the day he's a billionaire because he had a viral hit and was ready with a monetization strategy (and had amazingly cheap running costs).

None of this really speaks to his business or technical acumen, and he hasn't exactly done very much lately.

This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.

A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.

Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.

Since January 2013 they've spent almost the whole time on optimizing the performance.

And the only features they've implemented since where features people wanted really badly or features which came automatically – for example, after adding support for translucent objects they were able to add stained glass with just some few lines of code.

He has proven the exact opposite. He made a clone of an existing game, failed to deliver on almost everything he promised the people buying it, and then walked away from it leaving it to be never finished by someone else.

>This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.

Yes, that is exactly what it is.

I also noted that you did not mentioned which game he supposedly cloned. I noted that because when people say these things (whether minecraft or flappy bird or 2048) and I checked the other game, it usually turned out they provide very different experience.

[1] http://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecr...

Notch isn't even close to being a billionaire; he's a multimillionaire.