It’s been a few hours since the announcement of Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift for $ 2 billion, and now several devs are stepping up to defend it. This includes not only Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, but noted Star Wars Galaxies designer Raph Koster.
First off, let’s look at Oculus’ Palmer Luckey’s post on Reddit. He explains that Mark Zuckerberg took the trouble to visit the team at Oculus Rift and convince them that this was the way to go. Luckey cites Facebook’s work in helping push open hardware and software, and how they found that aligned with Oculus Rift. Ultimately, he says it came down to what they thought would be best for the future of VR.
Up next is a near-apologetic from developer E McNeill, who did make a game that received support from the Oculus VR team. McNeill also got caught up with Notch’s and everyone else’s reaction to the purchase, but has changed his mind, for these reasons:
1) Facebook will not stop plans to make games.
2) Oculus itself hasn’t changed.
3) This could be great for VR as a whole.
4) Not all developers are down on it. McNeill cites Rami Ismail and Robin Arnott.
Notably, Raph Koster made a dense and sweeping treatise regarding VR on the visionary level, and where Oculus Rift and Facebook come in on that vision. We don’t have room to get into it in detail here, but here’s the main takeaway (and a direct quote):
Oculus Rift (sic) serves Facebook by becoming the interface to other people online.
TLDR, Koster posits, whether Facebook is the most trustworthy entity to bring VR to its full potential or not, they are among the best positioned to bring it there.
Luckey has been gracious enough to reply to follow up inquiries regarding the purchase here:
Finally, John Carmack has not explained his side in full detail, but he is definitely supportive of the decision. You can read his tweets below:
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.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 26, 2014
I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 26, 2014
We know this has been a lot to swallow, but how are you feeling about the Facebook – Oculus Rift announcement now? Don't hesitate to let us know on the comments below.
