EvilRoy said:
Not to be rude, but I don't know why you're telling me this.
Because, Notch brought up being upset that his $10k investment helped make a relatively unknown company into a $2billion company. They got there by taking his money and doing exactly what he hoped they'd do with the VR market. They brought their A-game and have been resolving huge issues in the VR tech ever since and that's the only reason why they hit that pricepoint. So in this aspect, Notch is coming off as pouty. He would rather Oculus had turned down $2billion from a company that had the resources to absolutely insure it would happen and in style just so that they could remain an indie hardware studio. That's incredibly unrelealistic. How many small-name indie hardware companies are you aware of that have an international market?
And by the way, Oculus already had investors to the tune of millions. Oculus had a board of investors who had put in $19 million (Spark Capital and Matrix Partners each) and $75 million (Andreessen Horowitz). I don't know if the original Oculus team had any say in this at all but these are the people who jetisoned the Oculus into what we see in the DK2 and these are likly the people who brokered a deal with FB.
No its not, its business.
Believe me when I say that I have investments that I absolutely do not want to see blow up. For them to do so would not only disrupt long term plans, but create a need to re-evaluate the basis of many short term decisions. The only thing that I could do that is silly with respect to my investments is be upset when things go precisely according to plan. In all other cases it is completely reasonable to be pissed.
Notch didn't invest though. Investment generally implies a tangible return. He donated money to a company he believed would usher in VR. That ushering being the only form of return he requested and is something the Oculus team HAS already done and is continuing to be the absolute leader in. Now, with FB's investment they'll be able to keep ahead of Sony's team who has entered a solid entry for the market.
Let me tell you, without this kind of money source, Sony would have overcome Oculus in no time. Sony's very first demo device came in at around an 8.5-9.0 where the DK2 is a 10.0. They're one of the biggest hardware companies in the world if not the biggest. They have an advantage at every stage of the market.
I think you misunderstood my statement. Yes, you have whatever rights your country allows with regards to how you address people, but there are certain things that are inadvisable to say.
Sure, but that in no way applies to this situation. The comment I made that caused your comment was made back when it looked like Notch had simply pulled a game he was already making for the Rift just because Facebook creeped him out. In that scenario, his reasoning looking extremely pathetic. With my edit I pointed out that it was intended to be a free game made to support the rift as an indie company to another and had only been a couple weeks of discussion (not dev time). The better understanding of the project made his reasoning null. It was going to be a charitable thing and he wasn't obligated to do it anyways. The reasoning of "Facebook creeps me out" is still silly. But all the other reasons I suspect he has are not.
If I wanted to keep all the blood inside my body - or even just a general neutral relationship with the person - I would never refer to their personal moral imperatives as 'minor reasons'. Not to their face at least.
If you wouldn't say it to someone's face, then it would be cowardly to say it behind their backs. Things should only be said that would be said to a person's face.
Moral imperatives are subjective and as such are always available for questioning. It's the objective statements that aren't up for questioning. There's a shit-ton of questionable moral choices out there that lead to a lot of injustice and suffering that really should have been questioned early on. I understand that Notch's reasoning here was in no way immoral or leading to human pain, but I'm explaining that your philosophical stance that an individual's moral imperatives are somehow off limits. Some people are just going to be petty. I don't think that's the case here, but the statement that you can't question people's motivations is terribly wrong at best.
As for the investment. What I do see is that Notch has seen the people who invested a lot of money in the company make HUGE payouts (something like 20 times the investment). But his charitable donation, made at the riskiest time of all, will never see any return for him. That's got to be frustrating. But he made his contribution because he believed in the future of VR and that the Oculus was the force to get us there. His contribution has helped all of us see the progression of VR shoot forward in the smallest of time frames. So what the original goal of his contributions was, was achieved and hopefully will continue going foward. But at this moment he's kicking himself for it being a donation of support and not an investment.
But really, it's the people who invested over $100 million into the rift that made a huge difference in the company's trajectory and are the ones who are making the return. Not that $10k was trivial. But Notch gave it with the intention of the product being successful and made no arrangements for a financial return which may have been an option.
My only hope is that if they continue to develop and deliver the best VR that the world has seen then Notch will reconsider his decision. Not that I care about a free minecraft. I bought my Minecraft years and years ago. It'd just be nice to see his support return if they follow through.