Oculus Rift Buyout Leads To Torrent Of Anger On Kickstarter

josemlopes

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Toadfish1 said:
Oh well.

All aboard the Morpheus train!
Its going to be the second time Sony managed to be ahead by not really doing anything, just letting the competition make their own mess
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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I agree with them. They invested in a revolutionary piece of GAMING hardware. Not a fucking social media portal for your face. And I have little doubt that Facebook is not interested in gaming at all beyond retaining some of the Rift's support for the short term.

EDIT: And yeah, my hopes are with Morpheus now.
 

SecondPrize

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wulfy42 said:
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.
crowdfunding backers aren't investors. You can't expect a financial return on the money you've put in as that is in no way shape or form the nature of your relationship with the company. It's just a pre-order, but earlier than those have historically been offered. There won't be any money payed out to backers.
 

NuclearKangaroo

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Palmer can talk all he wants, but the way i see it, he has compromised the long term gains of a potential game changer in the gaming industry for some short term gain, even if its for the good of the customers as he says


just thinkg, what if valve had let themselves be bought by EA or some other publisher like that? where would PC gaming be? hell, where would ALL OF GAMING BE?, its clear steam influenced digital distribution on all fronts, the oculus couldve been something like this, but not now, my hopes for this piece of tech have dimished greatly



plus now ill never be able to be with my waifu




plus if they fuck this up theyll never hear the end of it, mark my words, and lets not talk what that would do the yet unborn VR industry, even if Sony manages to pull something off with their VR headset
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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ShakerSilver said:
Toadfish1 said:
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.
inferior platform, yes, but knockoff? Sorry, Morpheus had a working prototype two years earlier than Rift did.. If anything, Rift would be the knockoff.

YodaUnleashed said:
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.
Not all corporations are evil. Facebook is however. And yes, i dont buy anything from facebook nor do i use it. whats your point?
Oh, and corporations were around all the way down to 16the century. Heck, 15th if you consider insurances and banks corporations. (and iwth insurances even before). Corporations are not inherently wrong. they just need to be sensibly controller not to become evil.

Tanklover said:
No one who backed them in kickstarter is entitled to a cent of that money, are you people crazy?.
actually, they are entitled in ALL of that money. thats because they invested in a company, and then sold the company, except the CEO of the company kept the money.
 

Kingjackl

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Those people ran the risk when they Kickstarted Oculus Rift in the first place. They're entitled to their opinions (vapid as they are), but it's best to leave the actual creative and business decisions to the people who know what they're talking about.

See that Reddit thread with Palmer Luckey trying to reason with complainers by making valid points from an informed position and getting only "YOU SOLD OUT!" and "FACEBOOK IS THE EVIL!" in response.
 

Amir Kondori

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These guys used Kickstarter not to build a product but to build a business to sell. Typically you use venture capitol to do that. Pretty despicable if they don't refund backers.
 

mr8kc

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Strazdas said:
actually, they are entitled in ALL of that money. thats because they invested in a company, and then sold the company, except the CEO of the company kept the money.
No, they didn't invest. They pre-ordered an OR Devkit 1. That is all. They may have put money in, but they got what they paid for back out. End of.

I'm pissed, but only on the basis that VR tech is now in the hands of two distcint corps. One who has a history of putting ads in and taking data out. The other, a history of shitty gaming gimics.
 

Amir Kondori

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Kingjackl said:
Those people ran the risk when they Kickstarted Oculus Rift in the first place. They're entitled to their opinions (vapid as they are), but it's best to leave the actual creative and business decisions to the people who know what they're talking about.

See that Reddit thread with Palmer Luckey trying to reason with complainers by making valid points from an informed position and getting only "YOU SOLD OUT!" and "FACEBOOK IS THE EVIL!" in response.
You call them valid points, others would say he was just trying to justify the sellout. Sellout is exactly what it was, literally. He sold the company. Usually the people whose money you used to build that company would get a cut, but because he used Kickstarter he gets ALL that money himself, split among whoever is a stakeholder at Oculus.
Backers have every right to be mad as hell about it.
 

Playbahnosh

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Amir Kondori said:
Kingjackl said:
Those people ran the risk when they Kickstarted Oculus Rift in the first place. They're entitled to their opinions (vapid as they are), but it's best to leave the actual creative and business decisions to the people who know what they're talking about.

See that Reddit thread with Palmer Luckey trying to reason with complainers by making valid points from an informed position and getting only "YOU SOLD OUT!" and "FACEBOOK IS THE EVIL!" in response.
You call them valid points, others would say he was just trying to justify the sellout. Sellout is exactly what it was, literally. He sold the company. Usually the people whose money you used to build that company would get a cut, but because he used Kickstarter he gets ALL that money himself, split among whoever is a stakeholder at Oculus.
Backers have every right to be mad as hell about it.
^^this.

I'm kinda surprised this crowdfunding fad lasted as long as it did. I mean, it's friggin common sense! I jolt down some grandiose ideas and asks total strangers to finance my fever-dream, promising only some knick-knack, a place in the "special thanks" section or a skype call/dinner with majestic me. If I do succeed in the campaign and actually produce something worthwhile, I get to keep all the patents, copyrights and profits for myself. All that without investing a single dollar of my own. If the campaign doesn't succeed, the backers get their money back and nobody lost anything. If the campaign succeeds and I fail to produce anything worth a damn, whatever, right? It wasn't my money, what do I care. I just shove out whatever unfinished crap I managed to cobble together and call it a day (Dark Matter anyone?).

Or, I can do what Oculus did, and sell my company for the worth of a small country's entire GDP, buy an island and live like a king for the rest of my life. There is literally no way campaigners can lose with crowdfunding. Sure, they might need to endure some moaning and thrash talk when things go south, but that's kinda small price to pay considering the return.
 

Kingjackl

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Amir Kondori said:
Kingjackl said:
Those people ran the risk when they Kickstarted Oculus Rift in the first place. They're entitled to their opinions (vapid as they are), but it's best to leave the actual creative and business decisions to the people who know what they're talking about.

See that Reddit thread with Palmer Luckey trying to reason with complainers by making valid points from an informed position and getting only "YOU SOLD OUT!" and "FACEBOOK IS THE EVIL!" in response.
You call them valid points, others would say he was just trying to justify the sellout. Sellout is exactly what it was, literally. He sold the company. Usually the people whose money you used to build that company would get a cut, but because he used Kickstarter he gets ALL that money himself, split among whoever is a stakeholder at Oculus.
Backers have every right to be mad as hell about it.
I agree in principle, but crowdfunding doesn't make one an investor or a shareholder. I guess the best term would be a 'patron', since it's paying to support a creative concept, not investing in a business venture that they expect to see a return from.

Believe it or not, a patron should want the person or organisation they're backing to sell out. If you support someone, you'd want them to make money and achieve success from their idea. In this case, he hasn't even traded in any creative control for his two billion dollars; Oculus development hasn't changed as of yet, it's just owned by Facebook now.
 

SuperSuperSuperGuy

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My concern with the deal is the fact that Facebook is a social media website. The nature of Facebook implies that gaming is no longer going to be the focus of the OR, and it is instead going to be developed for social media. I'm worried about this because the appeal of the OR was never its social networking potential; rather, people funded it for playing video games. When I say "video games", I don't mean Facebook games like FarmVille and stuff; I mean games that would actually benefit from having a VR headset, like Team Fortress 2 and other action games.

I'm disappointed, but not all is necessarily lost. If Facebook decides to use the OR for the purpose that everybody wanted it to be used for (i.e. gaming), then regardless of who makes the product, it's still the same thing, y'know? Of course, I'm significantly more hesitant to throw money at Facebook than I would be toward the OR's original developers, but still.

EDIT: Oh, also, advertising. If it's treated as just a device that you plug into your computer, like a gaming accessory or something, then things should be okay, but if Facebook sees fit to plaster ads all over the OR's screen and/or software, then we've got a problem.
 

maxben

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Andy Chalk said:
RJ 17 said:
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?
I imagine that it's less pure anger and more disillusionment which comes out as anger. The idealism of the indie and the crowd to undermine the large corporate structure is important to many of those who use kickstarter, much like the situation for those who deal in Bitcoins or supported the Ouya. To them it feels like they've been cheated even though they were not in the technical sense of the word.

I would also like to point out a mistake in your math: K->P->B and therefore no K->no P->no B is silly logic for two main reasons:

1) There is no reason why regular investment could not lead to a product, Kickstarter was hardly a necessity for Oculus, it is merely a direction they chose to get to the product. Many companies have built products and have been bought out without Kickstarter (R->P->B)
2) You ignore that many of the individuals who were involved in K, as I mentioned above, would not have done so without their idealism. As such, if B then not K is an important logical statement (had a buyout been assumed as a final result, individuals would not have donated) which contradicts and negates K->P->B by adding ->not K.

So I think you are unfairly de-legitimizing their anger. Though I personally have no bone in this fight, I will never throw my money around as a donation to a company.
 

Tanklover

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Strazdas said:
Tanklover said:
No one who backed them in kickstarter is entitled to a cent of that money, are you people crazy?.
actually, they are entitled in ALL of that money. thats because they invested in a company, and then sold the company, except the CEO of the company kept the money.
I'm sorry, did I miss the part where they promised people in the kickstarter that they would be giving them equity in exchange for 1$? I don't think so. You're backing them so they have the money to develop the product which they obviously didn't have money for, and you would get a reward depending on the amount of money you gave them. Even if you gave them a million dollars you wouldn't be entitled to equity or money from them once they started making a profit and or sold the company, if you want to invest in hopes of buying part of a startup then kickstarter is the wrong place to do it. What sort of entitlement bs is this?.

I don't see how this whole thing is bad in the slightest, even if FB isn't as hands off about this as they seem to be with Instagram and Whatsapp, now OR has tons of money to develop an even better product which I'm sure will also be able to be used for gaming. This sort of knee jerk reaction is so ridiculous, reminds me of how everyone was SO ready to leave tumblr when Yahoo bought it, look at them still on tumblr. The internet seems to bring out the stupidest in people, specially the masses.
 

Sanunes

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I wonder if this is going to be the "great disaster" that everyone was waiting for with Kickstarter, for even though the project works I think a lot of people that donated are going to feel their money was wasted. Its going to be interesting to see if there is going to be a bunch of people that are wary of using Kickstarter now for they feel betrayed by the acquisition of Oculus Rift by Facebook.
 

Lightknight

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Is the Oculus Rift still being made? Yes? Then they (backers) have no claim of breach whatsoever. They're not happy about it but OR has already put out several very successful dev kits and has already spurred the tech community at large to solve this problem. Even if we don't get the exact Occulus Rift we want, we will get one and there will be competition now because of its mere existence.

This could actually be a big win for the product. It could open a lot of doors if Facebook successfully implements some of their real-time VR ideas (seats in a sporting event, classroom, etc).

Frankly, gaming alone would severely limit the possibilities of VR. This broadening of the market could do a lot of good for us. You could be sitting in your living room in a few years enjoying an IMAX theater with friends from around the country.

The only thing any of us should be worried about is if facebook shoehorns in social aspects to the point that you can't use the product in the way you want to. That is a legitimate fear but an unwarranted fear at the moment.
 

lacktheknack

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Andy Chalk said:
RJ 17 said:
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?
Because fuck corporations that sell us things. Fuck all of them.

...How have you not noticed this attitude, Andy? You've been here since the site started.
 

acillies45

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I agree with what Jim said yesterday: it could have been much worse.

Also, why is it so bad Facebook got it? Unless they totally waste it on dumb stuff, I think it's going to end up being used the way it was meant to be used. I mean Zuckerberg isn't stupid. I think he knows what he's doing with it.

True, I think Valve would've been a better candidate, but FB saw potential and they jumped first. It's business.

I'm just interested to see what happens.


As to the people who are angry: that's Kickstarter. You're more or less gambling on the product you're backing. They have a right to be angry...but at the same time, they were the ones who gave out their money.
 

Jumplion

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Andy Chalk said:
RJ 17 said:
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?
Pretty much exactly my thoughts on the matter.

The Oculus would not have been made in the first place if it weren't for the initial backers, but does anyone seriously expect the company, or any company for that matter, to forgo chances to expand their product or company just because "we'z indiez, we no need big companiez!"? There's this romanticized view on indie development, free from "the man" and "corporations" sinking their claws into the pure, "for the people" independent companies, but it really doesn't work out that way. And why should it? It really doesn't matter who bought Oculus. It could have been Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, Samsung, what have you. People would still be up in arms over the small company being taken in by a bigger one.

People are also thinking about VR technology in a very limited light. VR is not just about gaming, and Luckey has shown his interesting in applications of VR in various other fields. I don't know whether VR is a fad or if it really is the "next big thing", but it could be interesting further down the line.

In the end, the primary problem I see is this fundamental misunderstanding of what Kickstarter and the likes truly are. They are not investments, you are not buying stock into a company or product. You are simply donating some money to see a product you want get made, maybe getting some goodies along the way as thanks for your contribution. They do not owe you a rap-sheet of where the money goes, or what's being spent, or even a complete product in the extreme cases. It's a level below investors, who stand to lose much more if the company or product collapses, and we either have to change the system that Kickstarter and its equivalences go by or get over it and the subsequent entitlement that some feel over something they shouldn't be entitled to.
 

Amir Kondori

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Kingjackl said:
Amir Kondori said:
Kingjackl said:
Those people ran the risk when they Kickstarted Oculus Rift in the first place. They're entitled to their opinions (vapid as they are), but it's best to leave the actual creative and business decisions to the people who know what they're talking about.

See that Reddit thread with Palmer Luckey trying to reason with complainers by making valid points from an informed position and getting only "YOU SOLD OUT!" and "FACEBOOK IS THE EVIL!" in response.
You call them valid points, others would say he was just trying to justify the sellout. Sellout is exactly what it was, literally. He sold the company. Usually the people whose money you used to build that company would get a cut, but because he used Kickstarter he gets ALL that money himself, split among whoever is a stakeholder at Oculus.
Backers have every right to be mad as hell about it.
I agree in principle, but crowdfunding doesn't make one an investor or a shareholder. I guess the best term would be a 'patron', since it's paying to support a creative concept, not investing in a business venture that they expect to see a return from.

Believe it or not, a patron should want the person or organisation they're backing to sell out. If you support someone, you'd want them to make money and achieve success from their idea. In this case, he hasn't even traded in any creative control for his two billion dollars; Oculus development hasn't changed as of yet, it's just owned by Facebook now.
Yes, crowdfunding does not make you an investor, that was my point. As for your theory that "patrons" should WANT a sellout, well just ask the people who pledged to make Oculus a reality how they feel about it.

You DO cede creative control when you sell. Right now Facebook says they are going to take a hands off approach, and that will likely be true, for now at least. But Facebook didn't sink $2 billion into this for nothing. Their influence will shape the future of the project over the next five plus years, just watch and see.