Signaling the end to all remaining degrees of separation between Facebook and its VR headset division, Oculus, today announced the social media company that it will further integrate the two services. Coming this fall, the company will start sunbathing on stand-alone Oculus accounts as part of an effort to transfer the entire Oculus ecosystem to Facebook. This will begin in October, when all new Oculus accounts and devices will have to sign up for a Facebook account, while support for existing stand-alone accounts will be fully retired by early 2023.
Originally, an acquisition for Facebook, the Oculus Rift and the underlying ecosystem of Oculus software was first developed by the then independent Oculus VR group. Following the acquisition of the company for $ 2 billion back in 2014, Facebook has for the past several years largely treated Oculus as a stand-alone entity, selling products under the Oculus brand and leaving Facebook integration an optional feature – a feature co-founder Palmer Luckey himself guaranteed during the 2014 acquisition.
Likewise, the days of Oculus as a stand-alone ecosystem are now approaching, as Facebook has outlined its plans to transfer Oculus users to Facebook accounts, and the important implications for social media that this entails.
According to Facebook, training Oculus accounts will be a two-part process for the company. From October, all new accounts must be Facebook accounts – or more specifically, users will need a Facebook account to sign in to the Oculus ecosystem. Meanwhile, current stand-alone Oculus account holders will be stuck on their existing devices for a while, however, all future unrelease devices, even if paired with an existing Oculus account, will still require a Facebook login.
Facebook will then retain support for Grandma accounts through the beginning of 2023. At that point, the company will officially drop support for stand-alone Oculus accounts, and although the company does not threaten to unlock or disable non-Facebook users immediately, “full functionality will require a Facebook account.” In particular:
We will take steps to retain your content that you have purchased, although some games and apps may no longer work. This could be because they require a Facebook account, or because a developer has chosen not to support the app or game you purchased anymore.
Ultimately, this marks for Facebook the final step of the Oculus acquisition, and the company and its systems are more integrated into the larger Facebook ecosystem. The primary strength of Facebook as an end-user service provider remains its social offering, so the company cannot fully utilize these strengths as long as Oculus users remain outside the Facebook ecosystem. At the same time, this will also give the revenue-generating side of Facebook significantly more access to information about Oculus users, which the company will then be able to use for targeted advertising, tracking of usage and other purposes.
