Oculus Rift Buyout Leads To Torrent Of Anger On Kickstarter

[Charli]

I've seen both sides of the argument. And kickstarter remains a way to donate money. It's not investing money. You donate, and you are promised a thing. If the terms of the promise are not covered in the kickstarter, then...they're free to jet the project to the moon as long as you get the thing in your promise, I'm sorry.

I could be appalled to find out something about a charity post donation, sadly, I'm not going to get that money back.


And this is where things like investment and protections and all sorts of litigation complexities arise and might ruin kickstarter forever, which I'd really like to not see happen.

Your faith was misplaced, please get over your burn.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Well of course they're pissed off about this deal. Why the hell did they bother paying up with their own cash if some mega-corp like Facebook is just going to come in with $400 million anyways? That literally defeats the entire purpose behind crowdfunding, and essentially means that everyone that backed the Oculus just pissed (x) amount of money away.

I don't see how you (and a lot of other people) come to that conclusion. No Kickstarter backing means no product, which means no buyout - you can't have one without the other. And do you really expect companies like Oculus to attenuate their success to a level you find successful? You want it to be a hit so your money isn't wasted on a failed, dead-end product, but not so much of a hit that it'll attract bigger players with money to throw around?

People on Kickstarter paid to support the development of the headset in exchange for set rewards, which they will receive. Nothing has changed. So why the anger?

 

[Vigormortis]

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen either, though, as Oculus VR co-founder Palmer Luckey is still selling the merits of the deal on Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/], where he said the acquisition will enable the company to "greatly lower" the price of the Rift and that he's "100% certain that most people will see why this is a good deal in the long term."

But for who, Mr. Luckey? For who?

Certainly not the consumers. After all, we're talking about Facebook here. A company that routinely faces (legitimate) criticism for privacy violations, data mining, strong-arm tactics, sleazy business dealings, and destroying the competition through buy-outs and acquisitions.

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Sigh......

I had such high hopes for the Rift. And I certainly wasn't the only one. Many influential forces within the gaming and other tech industries did as well. Hell, even NASA was using early builds of the thing!

But now? That hope is lost. There is almost no chance this thing will remain an open-source open-platform. Which, quite honestly, was one of it's best selling points.

Oh well. Maybe this latest move will force Valve and others to pursue their own work into VR rather than just collaborating with Oculus.

 

[Johnson McGee]

"greatly lower the price of the Rift"

Through gratuitous use of embedded advertising and data mining probably.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Oh well.

All aboard the Morpheus train!

Yes, let's all get hyped for the cheap knock-off VR headset that runs on closed platform with inferior specs.

Cheap knockoff?, especially when Sony's has been in the making long before the Rift?, I suppose to the uneducated (let alone Sony recently talking about it) but it's by no means a cheap knockoff and the Rift compared to the money it has now was effectively cheap by the new definition with the money now involved.

People love Sony's VR and are hyped for it, I know I'm moderately happy for it but by no means was I super duper over the moon and back hyped for the Rift or Morpheus... dunno why we should be since the Rift still isn't fully polished and still isn't anywhere near popular with the public, if anything it;s popular with the super niche.

But hey I know what you're getting at as a PC player and that's fine but I'm going to wait and see before judging the Rift and Morpheus come out to the public, after all it's better to be widespread for VR than say to only 1000 people.

 

[Genocidicles]

Yes, let's all get hyped for the cheap knock-off VR headset that runs on closed platform with inferior specs.

You may be right about everything else, but I wouldn't call it a knock-off. It was in development for years before Oculus even did their Kickstarter.

I really think that Facebook overpaid for this. The Oculus is cool and all, but it isn't 2 billion dollars cool. Virtual reality sets like that are probably going to be a fairly common thing in the future, but the tech is at least 5 years of R&D away from being viable beyond a very small, niche audience, if not longer than that. They need to miniaturize the technology, make it cheaper, and figure out how to do compelling games on it (thins like EVE Valkyrie is a good first-step though) before it becomes a 2 billion dollar idea. In its current form, it's a very neat concept, and a pretty cool working prototype, but that's about it.

This is Facebook. They paid 20 billion dollars for a shitty messenger app... In comparison two billion almost seems an insulting price for Oculus.

 

[wulfy42]

I pretty much called this reaction, and as I said yesterday, the best solution is to simply pass on the "profit" at least in some small way to the original backers.

2.5 mill was collected, pay back 25 mill (10x the original investment) to the backers, and thank them for helping to get the project where it is today.

That still leaves a HUGE profit for the company, and would probably help prevent so many angry backers.

That is the right thing to do (and no, i'm not a backer).

It's not mandatory, nothing legally says they need to do it etc, but heck, due to the efforts of the backers, they just made freaking 2 BILLION dollars. Even if you only count the 400 million for now, you still would have a massive profit for every single employee....even if you tossed 25 mill to the backers as a thank you.

Doubt it'll happen, but it's what I would do.

 

[Ratty]

He's not complaining about it https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack so I assume he was ok with the deal. And his name being attached was certainly what led a lot of people to donate to the Kickstarter.

Carmack joined Oculus VR in August 2013, almost a full year after the Oculus Rift Kickstarter closed. He had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I see. Well I'd been misinformed about that. I'm still seeing a lot of hate thrown his way though, justified or not. Like I said though I don't feel I can pass judgement on him (or anyone else at the company for that matter) for this deal. It's just too much money to turn down. It would be hypocritical of me to criticize them for making the same decision I would probably make myself.

On the other hand, I can understand how a lot of backers might feel upset or even betrayed now that the system they thought was going to be fairly open will almost certainly be more tightly controlled and heavily monetized through ads.

 

[Frezzato]

What a mess this has turned into. Ball's in your court, Facebook. Only time will tell.

 

[Scars Unseen]

*shrug*

It's hardware. It will be good, or it will not. That is the only basis on which I will make my purchasing decision. I certainly don't give a shit whose logo is pasted on the front of the damn thing. In all likelihood, Facebook will find a lot of profitable uses for VR that the guys at Oculus might not have thought of, but as long as it doesn't interfere with my intended use of the Rift(playing games), I don't give a shit about that either.

 

[ShakerSilver]

snip

My point was there's no real reason to be hyped over it. The specs they released for it are less impressive than the 2nd Oculus Dev Kit due in July, so it will no doubt seem even more unimpressive once the Rift is finalized and released commercially. John Carmack himself said that you need at least a stable 90 fps to prevent people from experiencing motion sickness while using the Rift, and the PS4 can barely reach 60 fps at a 1080p resolution, let alone keep it stable with 2 output displays. Either people are going to be playing through screen doors at 480p with their Morpheus, or their going to get sick from choppy frame rates right in their face.

 

[Baresark]

Meh, I'm out of anger on the issue. They were only waiting to be bought out, they didn't care by who. It was not going to be released on the consumer level without a buyout. All we can do is hope that it doesn't get fucked up. My fear is that it's only going to be priced outside the ability for the average consumer to afford, which means you might as not buy it at all because the support will be really low and it won't amount to anything but an expensive novelty.

 

[chikusho]

Kickstarter and comparable platforms need a contract clause for something like this.
I'd suggest that if a company gets "bought", it either pays out the backers (money back) or even gives them a small share.
Of course up to now they only have to provide the rewards but there needs to be something like this for future cases. So it wouldn't change anything for the Oculus but it'd change a little for future kickstarters.

Currently, backers are basically donators. I don't think they want to be considered as full investors but something in-between would be good, I think.

Actually, I don't think it does.
People are willingly donating money towards a project, knowing full well that they will not have any control over the final product. Donators on Kickstarter and similar services are not investors, and I don't think that making a "backer" legally entitled to anything is a very good idea.

 

[YodaUnleashed]

I understand why people are angry/upset, not everyone likes or trusts Facebook, and one can criticise it and other seemingly 'dodgy' corps but its the whole 'coporation is evil' shtick that annoys me - either stop buying anything funded or produced by a corporation or stop lumping them all together and those that make deals with them as 'sell-outs'. Many don't seem to have noticed but corporations tend to run a lot of things around this little place we call Earth. Its certainly not perfect, but it ain't no 19th century either; corporations are not the spawn of satan.

 

[ritchards]

I've got a few Kickstarter projects that have latterly gotten backing / signed up with another company. As long as I get what I kickstartered, I'm fine with it. (Note: I didn't back OR, and one project I'm thinking of specifically hasn't given me what I backed yet, so take some salt with my opinion.)

 

[Sarge034]

The only good thing I see coming out of this is more bad press for kickstarter. How anyone can think giving money to "companies" with next to no consumer protection was a good thing I'll never know. I don't give money to beggars for the same reason I don't give money to kickstarter. You can't control what they do with the money afterwards. That's why if I feel inclined to get involved I give beggars food and become a legal investor.

 

[Playbahnosh]

You donate, and you are promised a thing.

That's the very definition of an investment. Donation is when you give WITHOUT expecting anything in return. If you chip in with your money on a bigger project and promised some kind of return, that's an investment. Oculus took the money of many individuals promising an indie developed, affordable VR gear. With selling the whole thing to Facebook, they've broken that promise.

It's like you give me money so I could build a big house, and in return for your money, I offer you the right to stay at that house whenever you want. Then when the house is almost complete, I sell the whole thing to a giant corporation. Now, I'm f@cking rich and you are stuck with a landlord who will paint all the rooms bright blue, install a PA system that will blare adverts 24/7 in every room and may or may not make you pay rent on top of that.

 

[Karadalis]

Heh.. so in truth this whole project was "How can the project founder get enough money and attention to sell out to a big corporation and get filthy rich"?

This is why kickstarter is so deliciously easy to abuse. Many people complain about the scammers on that service but this one takes the cake. The backers financed this sellout with their own money for crying out loud.

The founder of the company is a made man/woman now and doesnt have to work a single day in his/her live anymore for all he/she cares, and all it took was the dreams of alot of hardware nerds on the internet that had the audacity to believe in something.

Makes the whole thing look like the intention was a sellout from day 1. And as Jim of Jimquisition himselfe said.. the whole tech looks to be doomed from the get go to be relegated as some gimmick.. like camera controlled games.. 3D.. or the ouya.

MAkes you think that the project founders themselves hadnt much faith in the project and where only out to make big bugs as fast as possible.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

"most people will see why [I could not say "No" to so much money]."

here fixed that to you.

 

[weirdee]

*shrug*

It's hardware. It will be good, or it will not. That is the only basis on which I will make my purchasing decision. I certainly don't give a shit whose logo is pasted on the front of the damn thing. In all likelihood, Facebook will find a lot of profitable uses for VR that the guys at Oculus might not have thought of, but as long as it doesn't interfere with my intended use of the Rift(playing games), I don't give a shit about that either.

asking for facebook to not interfere with things that you like over potentially increasing their profits is like asking facebook to not interfere with things that you like over potentially increasing their profits