Yesterday, Facebook robbed the VR world, announcing plans to request a Facebook sign-up for future VR headsets. The decision broke an early promise by founder Palmer Luckey of Oculus and was drawn almost universally online, with critics worrying about intrusive data collection, targeted ads, and being forced to use a service they hated. On the Oculus subreddit, some users posted bitter memes Boeredoarp and data rip, while others exchange recommendations for other headsets. One posted a comic strip of Oculus as a sinking ship.
The truth is probably a lot less scary. Facebook-related boycotts fizzle out all the time – when it acquired Oculus in 2014, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson brutally murdered a deal to place his game on Oculus Rift, only to “officially be over” months later. (Minecraft was sold to Microsoft and appeared shortly after its launch on the Rift.) and Oculus presents many other benefits that can overcome the weariness of skeptics.
But Facebook also supports controversy during a deep scrutiny of its acquisitions and privacy practices. Even though its decision works for many users, it causes real concern mainly to the margins of VR – a small industry where the margins really matter.
There’s one big argument against a massive Oculus exodus: although yesterday’s change caused problems for a small group of headset owners, many will not notice much difference. Facebook has real privacy issues, and VR produces huge amounts of data about your movement and surroundings. Mar Facebook already owns that data. Facebook can see if you use a Facebook and Oculus account from the same IP address, whether or not linked. Buying any Oculus app with a credit card requires as much sensitive data as a bare-bones Facebook profile. If you are a VR user from home, Facebook is simply in the throes of a change of privacy that people have been making for years.
Despite a wave of reports about people selling their Oculus Quest headsets, the odds seem stacked against a consumer uprising. There is no mass deactivation to concentrate anger on coordinated action, as separate accounts will work until 2023, although Oculus says “all future unreleased devices” will require a Facebook account. The change apparently does not affect Oculus for Business customers, and companies are a larger and more stable market than consumers.
What about developers? Oculus needs popular apps to attract users, and some designers say forced Facebook integration is a deal-breaker. “I deactivated my Facebook account earlier this year and have no plans to do Quest / Oculus again,” Blarp! creator Isaac Cohen (who works under the name Cabbibo) told me on Twitter after the announcement.
But Oculus’ fall is a serious sacrifice. Developers need the largest audience they can get, which means you get release across all VR platforms. Oculus is one of the few companies that support large-scale VR game development. The standalone Oculus Quest is one of VR’s most popular headsets – and with good reason, considering its versatility, solid design, and a robust catalog of games owned by Facebook. As Ben Kuchera fan Polygon writes, the Quest is “great video games and great hardware … owned and controlled by the one company I would love as far as possible from the technology.”
Facebook has unleashed bigger rumors about clear damage, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal’s DeleteFacebook campaign and an advertiser boycott on hate speech. Add this to all the factors above, and it is highly plausible that the sign-up controversy will blow over.
But Oculus is also more vulnerable than Facebook as a whole. Facebook is an incredibly sticky and stand-alone service; it mediated the jobs, social lives and relationships of 2.5 billion people in early 2020. Oculus headset numbers are scarce, but they are estimated in the millions, to the top of a very small market. The success of the company still depends on having the best hardware and software experience, not just an overwhelming advantage.
Oculus’ competitors have gripped this controversy. HTC’s Vive Twitter account jumped into the Oculus announcement thread and threw the Vive Cosmos headset to angry VR fans. Joanna Popper, HP’s Head of VR, boast that the upcoming Reverb G2 “does not require a Facebook account”. Oculus competitors like Valve, which has a cross-platform storefront, can make money from almost anyone with a PC headset. But the Oculus Store is Rift and Quest only, so any hardware sales it loses is also a lost software client.
When Facebook is extremely angry, this controversy places Oculus in crosshairs of regulators. Lawmakers have previously questioned Oculus’ privacy policy, and investigators are currently investigating Facebook acquisitions for evidence that the company is abusing its power and collecting unintentional amounts of user data. There is also a newfound enthusiasm for splitting tech giants. Spinning a VR headset department is likely to be low on reformers’ priority list, but fear of privacy for data about a purchasing company is not exactly help Facebook.
Oculus is a small part of Facebook: even after the company’s non-advertising revenue peaked in early 2020, that money came from less than 2 percent of its advertising revenue. But VR enthusiasts are worried that a backlog could shrink the entire industry.
Facebook integration requirements create extremely privacy-conscious users who prefer the Oculus Store, and it removes a formal layer of data separation that many people (including me) appreciate. Facebook is also still making unexplained changes to privacy policies. Facebook would be fine if a few thousand alien Quest owners stopped buying software, but even small losses could knock indie developers out with razor-thin margins. The Quest is one of the only headsets that does not require a gaming PC or console, and even if HTC or Sony are a few disillusioned Oculus hardware customers, others may just decide to stay away.
Facebook integration also makes non-personal Quest use more difficult. “My own Facebook grips, this is a practical nightmare for those of us who manage shared devices in schools and libraries,” wrote Northwestern University Knight Lab member Rebecca Poulson on Twitter. An Oculus spokesman says organizations can use Oculus for Business and implement their own sign-in systems. But the more inconvenient it becomes to use a headset, the more likely these niche user bases will be – and in today’s VR sector, every headset counts.
Facebook’s login change is particularly frustrating because it apparently offers users so little. People who want Facebook-specific features can already get them. Some headset owners buy deep into the platform’s full ecosystem, but others rely on third-party stores like Steam, and this change only antagonizes them. Facebook says centralization will help facilitate a simpler moderation process, but it’s not clear why that can instead be streamlined.
In its announcement, Facebook said that the majority of Oculus users are already logged in with a Facebook account. That it may be worth the delay to encourage greater social engagement or to maintain two separate accounting systems. But it is also one of the persistent reminders that the success of Oculus – at least in part achieved with money and connections from Facebook – has come. If you love Facebook, Oculus headsets are already built for you. If you hate Facebook, Oculus just made its single worst feature almost impossible to avoid.
