And surprising takeover / purchase of the day goes to... Facebook buying Oculus!

[Tycow]

Blimey. That cool looking VR tech that people were getting excited about? Now owned by Faceplant.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/03 ... 2-billion/

It's not April 1st yet so... wtf? I really can't see Facebook staying hands off with Oculus and it's ongoing development.

It's had ramifications already:

"@notch: We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."

Source from Twitter

I say again. Blimey!

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

Mokonan mentioned it in the other thread: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... 00#4361700

As I said there, good news for Sony. Since they just announced a gaming VR headset project and gamers seem to hate the idea of facebook having a say in the oculus rift.

[Tycow]

Bugger, missed that one... cheers.

And indeed, Sony must be doing cartwheels. Hopefully Valve will still have something up their sleeve to satiate PC gamers. Reddit appears to have imploded at the news (some naughty language involved).

Well, there goes my interest in Oculus.

[Dreez]

And i had such high hopes for a good, stable and highquality full-immersion
tool for gaming. But that's all shattered now when they sold out to Facebook,
which will turn this into something that makes money, instead of something
that the initial brains behind it, set out to create - something for gamers.

My interest in this VR-device just dropped to absolute zero.

I feel sorry for all those people who were duped into putting money into this project.

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

Also, wasn't Oculus Rift crowdfunded? It seems wrong that they have taken all that money and yet still felt the need to sell themselves off to the Zuckerberg machine.

[Jumee]

well 3d farmvile and targeted adds and share your 3d adventures with friends for likes, cant be that bad ... right?

[philip_hughes]

Dreez; you were beaten to it by 20 minutes . Moved.

[Rednoahl]

This is exactly why I don't do kickstarter - I'd be apoplectic if I had backed oculus.

[Chobittsu]

Well that solves me buying it~<3

[Trialbyfire]

Looks like some game companies are not going along with it:

When Facebook announced a $2 billion dollar deal to buy virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg promised the new technology would help “change the way we work, play and communicate,” and critics hailed the acquisition as a huge win for Facebook.

But at least one video game industry notable isn’t happy about the deal. Markus “Notch” Persson, the video game designer who created the smash hit sandbox construction game Minecraft, says he has no intentions of doing business with Zuckerberg’s social media giant.

“We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus,” Persson said on Twitter shortly after the news broke. “I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.”

On the other hand, if Egosoft uses it for Rebirth, they might capture a whole new market!

[Alee Enn]

I was planning to buy an Oculus Rift for Elite Dangerous ... not any more, I don't care how good it is. I can't stand Facebook.
I'll bet the Dev kits (non-Facebook Oculus Rift) just went up in value.

[kurush]

I wouldn't mind buying it eventually, with Facebook resources the product itself might get even better and I don't think they can figure out a way to violate my privacy with a friggin glasses, lol. But it is an interesting turn of events for kickstarter backers. Basically, they contributed so that some dude can make 2 billions of it. But then they might get their rewards still.

[eladan]

This is exactly why I don't do kickstarter - I'd be apoplectic if I had backed oculus.

I had a quick look at the comments thread, and they're not exactly overjoyed. Nor is Notch, who backed it to the tune of $10,000, and had recently been planning to look at doing an oculus rift version of minecraft. He canceled that on the news of the buyout.

:EDIT: missed TBF mentioning Notch above...

[muppetts]

I would wait and see, I am however surprised they sold, I mean the whole point of Kickstarter is to do the project yourself with minimum interference from additional investors. They have now handed over all power to a corporate entity with shareholders who will have expectations, which I doubt will include the very small PC games/VR set up as a priority.

But 2 Billion, easy for us to complain we are losing out on a possible new cool tech and they are sellouts but I myself am pretty sure if someone came along and offered me 2 billion for my small start up company, which has zero revenue and no finished product, that I would shout Eureka and run off to the nearest bar

[Dragoongfa]

From what I have seen that's 400 mil in cash and the rest are FB shares.

And that's why Kickstarter should have a "Backers beware" sign.

[muppetts]

Which = 2 bilion and given the performance of FB shares over the last 12 months potentially much more!

Having googled Mark Z quotes he has already said he wants it for a

'social and communications platform'

So I think he clearly did not buy this with games as a focus.

[RegisterMe]

It's not impossible that they will produce a non-Facebook requiring version. I hope so anyway.

[Arsaneus]

I'm not yet sure what I have to think about this...more money is always nice...but facebook? Carmack surely isn't happy about this.

Still...I already ordered the DevKit2. I am still looking forward to a good final product and a true VR experience.

Arsaneus

[felter]

This could lead to some interesting legal quandaries, especially as there is nearly 10K backers of the product on Kickstarter and I suspect that more than a few of them wouldn't have backed it if they knew this was going to be the outcome. Then I bet there are a few that are going, I backed this and paid for it's current development, where's my cut of that 2 bill. I also suspect that there are more than just Notch that is not happy about this.

As for myself, while lucky Palmer is going this is great for the product with extra capital to play with, but in the end it's going to be Joe Blog who is paying for it. when it's released it will be a requirement to have an active facebook account to be able to use it, which you will need to be logged onto at the time of using it. You will have to suffer adverts when using it and all the time it will be gathering any and all information it can about anything and everything you do, which will ultimately then be sold off to anyone who is willing to pay for it. I was looking forward too it, now I'm not too sure about it.

Designed for gamers, by gamers.

Shouldn't this be changed to:

Designed for social media, by just another greedy person.

[felter]

OK here is the Shreholders meeting. head to 3:50 for the reason Facebook has bought OR. (I haven't listened to the whole statement but seemingly the word social and aspect is mentioned a few times.)