Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network Oculus users, already fuming at Facebook chaining their VR headsets to their Facebook accounts, have been warned they could lose all their Oculus purchases and account information in future if they ever delete their profile on the social network. The rule is a further binding of the gaming company that Facebook bought in 2014 …
Over 9500 people ripped off for just under 2.5 million based on false promises on their kickstarter. Followed by lie after lie.
Now this.
I can only hope Oculus just dies. Hard. It deserves to die. As a company. As a product. As an idea that it's ok to lie, cheat, lie again, cheat, defraud, and somehow still be able to find enough people purchase the product. The people who were behind this massive shit-show of a fraud need to be taken down.
They won't, I know. They'll keep their millions, they'll laugh at all the stupid fucks who bought into it, but damnit, it's not right.
but, as you said, "They'll keep their millions, they'll laugh at all the stupid fucks who bought into i". And the world moves on, and news suckers fund new, revolutionary, breakthrough, disruptive, life-changing, indispensable and absolutely essential toys. Great idea, let the fools pay for x number of ideas, see which one breaks through, scoop, repeat. Isn't it what other giants practice, google particularly, but not solely?
The sad truth is that the public is gradually coming to accept hardware as a subscription. It started with phones that were locked to carriers and couldn't be unlocked. Zuck is just the latest greedy arsehole who's jumping on this trend. People will still buy the Oculus, even knowing that it won't work without a Fecesbook account, because they have no intention of ever quitting FB. Even Apple's buy-in pales in comparison to Zuck.
It's a sad world we live in.
" It started with phones that were locked to carriers and couldn't be unlocked."
The EU and UK have banned the locking of phones to a carrier.
"Oculus is definitely now technologia non grata. Hopefully this will cause it to fail"
I think the better way to solve this one is for Facebook's conduct in this matter to be dealt with by a thorough anti-trust investigation in the USA to include all the tech giants and their assorted misdeeds as well.
IANAL but at least in Europe, I would think that them deleting games from your account would be an illegal act. Yes, I am aware that you dont "buy" software anymore, you licence it, blah, blah, blah. But even so, removing something you've paid for would seem a step too far simply because you deleted your account. This is not a service shutting down and deleting the things you've bought (like what happened to that Microsoft book service whose name i cant remember). This is an active service deleting paid for content because of a change in the terms of service (now requiring a login). That would seem likely to be illegal to me.
Any one want to test the rules, and then take this to court? It would be lovely to get a solid European court ruling on this, so that we can finally put a stop to these tech giants threatening such actions. I wouldnt count on the American Courts to do anything about this, so lets hope the European courts continue to be the beacons for consumer rights...
problem is, it would take a non-gov to pick up the fight, the court case will take 10 years (minimum, with appeals and further appeals), and in the end, the offender will pay 10 - 100 mln, which is not even small change to them. Rinse and repeat.
I suspect in Europe you'd get a sympathetic view from the courts of a large company unilaterally fundamentally changing their T&Cs to the detriment of consumers.
I agree entirely, but banks change T&Cs continuously, usually to the detriment and get away with it.
Icon, for FB et all its dodgy outfits --->
"[...] but banks change T&Cs continuously [...]"
Some UK banks are considering charging for current accounts again. No doubt they will offer the fair alternative of you moving your account elsewhere.
At the same time the Westminster government is making all state benefits paid only into a bank account or electronically.
Not surely, but possibly. There's a prohibition under the GDPR against collecting personal data on the basis of consent where the data collected is not essential for the provision of a service subscribed to by the data subject. there's also a prohibition on constraining consent. Depending on the detail, the two might possibly be invoked together towards an argument. However there seem to be moves to defuse provisions of the GDPR which are viewed as "excessively onerous" in many quarters, so this might be a hard (and expensive) matter to pursue.
"I would think that them deleting games from your account would be an illegal act."
If your Amazon account is deleted for returning too many items, any music or movies you have are also gone. If Apple loses the right to license some music, it disappears from you iDevice. If you have a streaming account with Disney, they can delete your access to all or a portion of their library if they want you to watch it on the telly with all of the commercials during the holidays.
If you don't have it in your own sweaty hands, it's not yours. If it takes an internet connection to make it go, it can be taken away any femto second. I think it was Heinlein that said you don't own anything you can't carry at a dead run.
I have software subscriptions for the applications I use in my business, but I also have k'd versions as a back up. Sometimes I run the k'd version because the official software is a right PIA. I'm not sure I'd win a lawsuit, but I think I'd have a good chance if I can show I have paid for a license. If my or their internet is down, I still may need to get work done. The last thing I want is for some window to pop up telling me the software can't check in and I, therefore, can't save what I'm working on or output some files.
IANAL either, but I think the GDPR is going to be an even better fit for the job.
"When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract."
"IANAL and all, but this just sounds like the perfect application for antitrust law..."
Depends. You likely agreed to arbitration so you're screwed there. You might have a case if the requirement is put in place after you have already purchased the item if they won't buy it back from you (at full price). The "fine print" is long and tedious so you won't read it (or understand it). I live in a world of contracts so I've gotten reasonably good at spotting the pitfalls but not all of them.
the Apple 'lock-in'. This move by Faecaebook takes the whole concept to new levels of scumbaggery. This will be the new baseline.
I can't wait for someone to reverse engineer the Oculus H/W and provide a new service without the Facebook Big Brother Overlord watching your every move.
Stop using Zuckbook now. Vote with your feet. Give them the finger.
"And to think we complain about...
the Apple 'lock-in'."
With Apple it's well known going in that it's a very tight environment. You don't buy an iPad and a year later they tell you that if you don't get and keep a subscription with Apple, it will stop working and everything on it will be wiped.
What's the state of play with other VR systems? Does Occulus have better hardware than competitors? (Edit: a quick Google search tells me the Occulus systems are stand-alone and work well, the HTC systems are tethered and the Valve system looks to be the mutt's nuts but is very pricey. )
Last I looked, VR looked to be slowly growing (hampered by the cost of the GPUs required to use it satisfactorily), with only a few gamers dipping their toes in the water... haven't heard much about the PlayStation VR kit for a while either, amongst the news of the latest generation consoles.
When the first HTC Vive came out you basically needed a top end gaming PC to do it justice. (Or an extremely expensive high end gaming laptop).
A decent mid range PC is fine now, or a more regular gaming laptop (although these are still pricy). Valve recommend a GTX 1070 or better for the Index, I'd probably suggest a 2060 Super, or better.
The best experience currently (imho), I'd say is with the Valve Index, full room scale, really good Index controllers, and of course a large software platform in Steam. But it's still expensive, so not exactly casual yet!
The new Index Controllers also work with anything that uses the Valve lighthouse system, so can be used on older kit like the HTC Vive (one of my friends has a 1st gen Vive, and bought some Index controllers for it.
...my recent purchase of a Valve Index over here.
A couple of months ago I was still weighing up which headset was the best buy. The Oculus gear was getting the best reviews on the various tech websites, it's price point was much lower than the competition (in the £300-£400 region)... but that "you now need a Facebook account to use it" had happened. I thought it just wasn't going to be worth the hassle of dealing with whatever jack-assery Facebook started to throw around and went with the (much) more expensive option instead. The Index was £919, if I recall right.
Hear that, Facebook? I'd rather pay an extra £500 than deal with you and your bullshit.
I had the Oculus DK2, was planning on sticking with Oculus once the full retail version came out.
I'd heard Facebook were buying them, so I bought a HTC Vive instead.
Later on I upgraded to the Index, sold the Vive to a friend, who also wanted to avoid Oculus due to being owned by Facebook.
I'm sure its no coincidence that there have been a convergence of stories about Facebook and gaming recently and it looks like Oculus has been dragged into the mire with it. Maybe as the Oculus Quest 2 goes mainstream they've decided they can piss off the tech nerds who are their existing user base. Or perhaps they've committed a major error. Either way it seems like a dick move to force people to use a Facebook account to use their headset.
One piece of advice I would give for anyone pissed by this but who still wants to use a headset is to buy a burner sim, register a separate FB account and never mix the two together.
If it's a fake account linked to a burner sim for verification then yeah they can track you. They can track all the games you play with your fake persona and people you connect online. It doesn't allow them to amalgamate that information with anything else you may use Facebook for.
Just remember HTC are still in the game (much better kit) and PSVR is similar cost IF you have a PS4.
I am going to borrow sons PSVR and play his motion controlled FPS game. As I am very good with MOVE and FPS* should be fun.
* Top 0.5% online with Killzone 3 and entirely with MOVE.
Use a burner sim, make up a name of another person. How are they going to decide that you are not part of the same household?
Fair point. They might just figure out that you're in the same household, active about the same times of day, purchases are made with the same credit card, and whatever other information they obtain. (I don't know if Facebook purchases data like demographic information, vehicle registrations, or voter affiliation.)
At least Personal Skype was free and MS had more or less broken it anyway by the time you could only use an MS account.
See also Minecraft, which MS bought.
When are the so called Tech companies going to be reigned in? Apple and Microsoft are Tech, but really Google, Facebook and Amazon just leverage technology.
These are shocking lists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Amazon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Facebook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet (Google)
The real tech companies don't have a great look either. Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Qualcomm etc.
When are the so called Tech companies going to be reigned in? Apple and Microsoft are Tech, but really Google, Facebook and Amazon just leverage technology.
Don't know, but when US Senators start working towards this, El Reg writes whiney articles complaining about it.
Just because such a clause is written down, that does not make it legally valid or enforceable. Most EULAs are already void simply because it's not reasonable to expect people to have actually read hundreds of pages of legalese - that's been given as an actual court ruling. So the fact that many of them also contain illegal clauses making them even more void is just icing on the cake. EULAs aren't intended as legal contracts, they're just an intimindation tactic that rely on the average person not knowing any better and not having the resources to take it to court.
The problem is that you never signed an actual contract. It's the miracle of the Internet and Terms of Service that you automatically accept when you use the site. If the terms change, which they definitely can, then it is up to you to not use the site if you don't agree.
Generally, if a website actually comes up with something I do not agree with, I will indeed no longer use the site (eh, LinkedIn ?). However, one must admit that Facebook has the easy upper hand here, because of the amount of people who basically have it connected intravenously.
So The Zuck just goes and makes a monopolistic dick move, because he can.
I really would like to see a class action lawsuit on that, but I don't see that you can complain legally.
Surely changing their terms and conditions after you purchased the item to make Facebook login compulsary, is then a breach of contract?
It's a change to the contract terms, no more or less.
You use contract language to make a moral argument. Keep those concepts separate.
Breach means that party violated the terms of the contract. Your remedies for breach are defined by the terms of the contract and applicable law. You could demand a full refund if that's one of the remedies available to you. If you file a lawsuit, be ready to show that your claim is appropriate, reasonable, and necessary. There's a reason that companies like to impose binding arbitration to resolve contract disputes.
If Facebook is trying to kill the Oculus, this is a great way to do it. Just piss off not only your existing customers, but all your new customers to. This is like the French threating to cut off the middle finger of British archers, but got defeated instead. The archers showed the one-finger salute yelling "We can still pluck yew!" The modified form is what everyone should be yelling at Facebook as their ass is dragged into court for bait and switch.
I also believe this to be false. Firstly, I first heard it about the "two-finger salute" rather than the middle finger (which is widely cited as being phallic in origin rather than archery-based). Secondly drawing a longbow usually uses three fingers, rather than two. Thirdly, the origin of "fuck" is generally believed to have been derived from middle-German "fikken" rather than the pun above.
Very easy way of avoiding it luckily there are other good companies, one even works on a games console!
A son has the following VR platforms.
Firstly PSVR, it works really well and is a good entry level system. It may be tied to PSN but with a PS4 you tend to have to be.
Next Vive, very good setup not as comfy. I don't think it is tied but the games are from Steam.
Note NO OCULUS.
Also funny how gamers are happy to sign up to STEAM, PSN or XBL but Faecesbook no. What are they doing so wrong?
Valve (Steam), and Sony (Playstation) are games companies. They only want to sell you games and sometimes the tech to play said games. Microsoft, at least the Xbox part of the company, has so far managed to remain also just a games company and not brought the data scooping/Ad purveying part of Microsoft in yet. Note yet...
Facebook is a data gathering firm, who makes its money selling adverts and false info to peddle at you. Any connection with Gaming is purely to gather more data and peddle you more ads.
Are you really surprised that gamers are happy to sign in to game firms in order to buy games, but not to sign into a firm who will then collect your data and sell it on to third parties without your consent?
Flogged my Oculus Quest on fleabay last week. a) I wasn't using it really b) FUCK FB and its insidious ways. I know I had until 2023 to merge accounts with FB but I got off that shit show probably 8 years ago and no intention of returning. I had considered creating a fake account just to use the Quest but thats a no go either.
This is for me one of the stupidest things Facebook could have done and if this doesnt kill the Oculus dead in the water, I'll be very very surprised.
VR is still in its infancy. That means the only people on board are early adopters and those who feel invested in the technology. It's also a product that has at the moment about a 2 year shelf life, before things move to a new level. So you've just p*ssed off a large number of tech saavy people who realise that this is a tech in its infancy and so most will wait until there current Oculus is no longer good enough for them, and then will move to another brand.
Oculus isnt the top end of the market, so people arent going to begrudgingly buy their Headset because its the best out there. They were considered good value previously, but as has already been mentioned above, people will just hold off buying until they can afford another (probabaly better) unit. VR is not exactly a must-have now item.
If Oculus, were the bottom end of the market, I could see them doing this to try and combine it with their mobile games, (like that Samsung one a couple of years ago). But no oneis going to fork out €400 for something to play mobile games on (or at least not on top of the money already spent on the phone).
So frankly, if this doesnt kill Oculus in the next few years, I will be VERY surprised...
+1+1+1 Exactly this.
I have a Quest not because it is the best device but because it is untethered, it has a good range of games and it is a great way to introduce others to VR. Having been interested in VR research since university (VPL Eyephones and hacking Nintendo Powergloves - good old days), the Quest provided a way to show what it is all about without a requirement for a high end gaming rig to drive it.
VR gamers and developers are generally tech nerds and enjoy something different. They are not your normal, mainstream gamer who will try it and get bored shortly afterwards. Over the last year I have noted the emergence and expansion of the so called social aspects - VR theatre, VR spaces to meet other avatars... Knowing that most geek types are an anti-social bunch this always seemed a bit odd but now it makes sense.
The problem is that the general public do not really want VR headsets so pushing Oculus at normal Facebook types is unlikely to get much traction. There is no killer game for VR to draw new players in and there is certainly no killer game for Quest 2 as it uses the current Quest titles. Oculus will probably push out updates for the Quest 2 as they did for the Quest so it will improve but why will someone not already interested in VR buy it?
Equally, a lot of VR nerds do not want Facebook - These are teccy types like your average El Reg reader so social media consists of forums not Facebook. While Oculus was separate from Facebook there was a grudging acceptance but that has stopped now.
So they are upsetting their core (including developers) in an attempt to push a £300 VR headset onto people who do not want it. I can't see this working out well for anyone.
Props to the guys that have worked out a jailbreak! VR has always been the playground of hackers, long may it continue to be so.
Twitch and Discord are the big two "social networks" for VR gaming peeps, because they do livestreaming and Twitch pays you (if you have a sufficiently large following).
Facebook just sells your life to anyone with some cash - there's no comparison at all.
This will definitely kill Oculus completely the moment one "notable" streamer has any form of trouble.
I've only used my daughter's PSVR a couple times, and that was to watch the VR version of Hulu (yes, a VR streaming video. Just had to see just why they even made such a thing). I suppose it would be useful if you had a smaller TV screen, and wanted to watch Yuno Gasai murdering people in widescreen.
I don't own any AR gear but I still disable "dom.vr.oculus.enabled" and "dom.vr.oculus.invisible.enabled" in about:config of Firefox.
I haven't looked at the source and I'm sure that the code is innocuLus* without an attached headset but my distrust of all things Facebook makes me to disable it in my web browser anyway.
*see what I did there?
A cow-orker of mine has just bought a Quest II. I laughed a little when he said "I had to sign up to Facebook" and then it struck me just how many people are being suckered into the clutches of the data fetishists with promises of "shiny." That, and just how green around the gills he looked after playing with it for hours the night before with the disagreement between visual cortex and inner ear still raging...
By the time an open source solution arrives it'll be too late. The masses will already be hooked on - and quite possibly hypnotised by - the commercial loss-leader offerings.
I'm completely infuriated by this. When I bought this device from Microcenter, nobody said anything about my having to connect my Facebook account to the Oculus to be able to use it. We were literally promised this would never happen. Sounds like a class action lawsuit to me! Facebook is seeming more and more like Nazi Germany under Joseph Goebbels propaganda machine every day! Hoping now that we have a progressive Administration, that our government will do something about this!
#ZuckerbergSucks
#FacebookSucks
#EndTheCorruption
#FreeTheOculus
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