You'll Need a Facebook Account To Use Future Oculus Headsets (theverge.com) 120
Oculus will soon require all of its virtual reality headset users to sign up with a Facebook account. The Facebook-owned company says it will start removing support for separate Oculus accounts in October, although users can maintain an existing account until January 1st, 2023. All users can maintain a distinct "VR profile" with a separate friends list. From a report: Starting later this year, you'll only be able to sign up for an Oculus account through Facebook. If you already have an account, you'll be prompted to permanently merge your account. If you don't, you'll be able to use the headset normally until 2023, at which point official support will end. Old headsets using non-linked accounts will still work, but some games and apps may no longer function. Developers can keep using an unlinked developer account without social functionality, and the Oculus for Business platform uses a separate login process that will remain unchanged. Facebook also says that all future unreleased Oculus devices will require a Facebook login, even if you've got a separate account already.
Pft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good job losing a bunch of potential customers with that announcement.
I've always been interested in Oculus (family member loves it), but now I'll definitely not purchase one.
Facebook free for ~1.5 years now.
Re:Pft. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I can't say buying into VR was ever high on my list, but this pretty much guarantees that if I do I won't be buying an Occulus.
Question though, is the headset inoperable without an account? Or is it just to access the Occulus store and social crap?
The article isn't completely clear.
Re:Pft. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Pft. (Score:2)
That's mystifying. Given that Facebook requires consent under GDPR I struggle to see how they can possibly claim to have meaningful consent for forced vr users.
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The GDPR only requires you to present the option for something public. I.e. You can't force a person to user to have to accept a GDPR to read the Slashdot homepage. You can however mandate accepting GDPR terms as a condition of making a Slashdot account since at that point you're no longer public and are engaging in a 1 to 1 contract.
Buying items is the same. You can force users to have to accept the terms or return a device, the GDPR does allow that.
Re: Pft. (Score:2)
Right, but for some users at least those terms didn't exist when they purchased the device. So now they're left with a choice: accept a bricked device forever or be forced into "consenting". That's no consent and so likely all subsequent processing on those individuals is not lawful.
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For those users who bought a device before those terms existed nothing changed. Prior to the GDPR forced consent was allowed, post GDPR forced consent is allowed.
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Other sites are reporting that it is just the Oculus Store that will require a Facebook login. If you get software from Steam or other sources, you will still be able to run it without needing to log into Facebook. Until it actually rolls out there will be quite a bit of uncertainty about the details though, like will the Oculus Store be the only place you can get firmware updates. Also I recall some previous reviews of an Oculus device (don't remember which one) saying you had to create an Oculus account t
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It doesn't really even matter to me. Buying a Facebook-owned device was already unlikely, due to my distrust of Facebook's stewardship of Occulus. Now it's guaranteed I will never purchase one.
Why do you even need some online account to use one of these things? That's just creepy.
Re: Pft. (Score:1)
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Question though, is the headset inoperable without an account? Or is it just to access the Occulus store and social crap?
You need an account to install the software in order for the HMD to run at all.
Post installation you can (currently) firewall the Rift from Facebook and it will still work without the 24x7 connectivity to Facebook. I've been running my CV1 that way for years without any issues.
Oculus has nothing remotely competitive to offer in the HMD space. HPs Reverb G2 is the Oculus CV2 that never happened... No reason even if you completely ignore the Facebook account requirement to even consider Oculus.
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When the US State Department demands I submit any information about social media accounts I have used in the past five years to obtain an entry visa, I can say 'zero accounts'.
Once hardware starts requiring social media accounts to function and links hardware to those accounts, the visa questions become problematic.
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Question though, is the headset inoperable without an account? Or is it just to access the Occulus store and social crap?
It's inoperable. You can't run the Rift or Quest headsets without the Oculus Store running, and you can't set it up without logging in. Oh actually you can't even run the damn headset if the store isn't up to date with the latest version.
Facebook are pushy as heck in this department which causes a lot of grief since they've pushed out some dud updates over the past year and not given users any ability to roll back.
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It's inoperable. You can't run the Rift or Quest headsets without the Oculus Store running, and you can't set it up without logging in. Oh actually you can't even run the damn headset if the store isn't up to date with the latest version.
This is not true. The rift stack can be completely firewalled from the Internet and will work this way with no issues. Neither are there time bombs forcing you to update. If it can't connect it doesn't know about the update and so will never do so.
There is a generic catch all error misleadingly indicating you have to update. This is really just reporting an HMD connection problem and is resolved by fixing whatever is wrong. Loose cable, wonky USB..etc.
Facebook are pushy as heck in this department which causes a lot of grief since they've pushed out some dud updates over the past year and not given users any ability to roll back.
Facebook's new motto is move slow and still break t
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I agree. I had been debating getting one for awhile, but now I don't have to worry about it anymore.
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This was an eventual certainty, and the reason I haven't - and will never have - bought an Oculus.
Facebook can die a fiery death.
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Yeah, same. I was going to get the Rift S this year, but now I'll never buy it.
Re:Pft. (Score:4, Funny)
As soon as Facebook bought them, I removed them from my list of VR options.
Facebook-free since 1970.
Re:Pft. (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook-free since 1970.
Damn. You beat me by one year.
It's pretty absurd these needed any kind of "account" at all, in the first place. Bring back the days when devices were just commodity pieces of hardware, not some sort of relationship with a company.
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Facebook-free since 1970.
Damn. You beat me by one year.
Is that 1971 or 1969? What is "beating" in this context? :)
Bring back the days when devices were just commodity pieces of hardware, not some sort of relationship with a company.
These days are not coming back until maybe European Union laws force it to happen.
Also, the days when software at least pretended to be a purchase and only had to be bought once (and not on monthly basis, trying to keep your data "on the cloud").
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Facebook-free since...whatever year they started.
Re:Pft. (Score:4, Insightful)
I lost interest the second the acquisition was announced.
I don't want FB anywhere near my data. I knew THIS would happen way back then. Fuck Oculus.
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I missed that announcement, but now Oculus is as good as dead, to me.
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AFAIK my Windows 10 gaming PC doesn't have a Microsoft account and I even got the ISO image directly from them.
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1. Why would you need anything from their store.
2. I don't think MS requires your REAL identity, even if you did create one.
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They want you to, but no, there is always a very well hidden cancel or skip or close button somewhere that lets you skip MS account creation.
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You have to confirm it three times.
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there is always a very well hidden cancel or skip or close button somewhere that lets you skip MS account creation.
The button is not necessarily present though.
Currently, you have to kill your wifi (since you setup wifi first) to make this option appear. If you are connected to WiFi, the skip option will not show up at all.
This should be illegal.
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Doesn't MS require an account to download anything from their store or set up a computer with their OS?
No but they sure want everyone to think they do.
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Visual Studio asks for a Microsoft account when setting it up. Maybe there is a way to circumvent that, but so far I'm not aware of it.
Re:Pft. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Facebook free for ~1.5 years now."
That's what they want you to think. You made an account, you're tied to them forever.
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With family and friends using Facebook, I still have a Messenger account...
I know this means my account is just frozen and all the data is still there being sold and pillaged... but the battle to move people over to Signal is too onerous. At least I got my wife to use Signal...
Eventually I'll "move" to Europe and request all this crap be deleted.
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If you didn't make an account, they still have a profile on you.
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Good job losing a bunch of potential customers with that announcement.
I've always been interested in Oculus (family member loves it), but now I'll definitely not purchase one.
Facebook free for ~1.5 years now.
Yup. Good thing there are a few competitors, such as the HTC Vive. I could hope the Oculus is hacked, to avoid Facebook logins, but would I even want to be giving money to Facebook in the first place?
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Hate the way the original Oculus team sold out for a quick buck. If any of you are here reading this, do you know what you've done?
Re:Pft. (Score:5, Interesting)
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This. I was on the edge about buying one this week. Good I read this article before.
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Exactly.
I guess I won't ever be buying an Oculus whatchamacallit.
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Good job losing a bunch of potential customers with that announcement.
For the past 9 months Oculus has not been able to keep up with headset demand. Even now 2 of their 3 headsets are out of stock. I don't think they will lose any sleep over losing a few customers.
But to be honest, as great as the Rift S is there are alternatives on the market and anyone who is against Facebook should be looking towards those even before this announcement.
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Maybe they're possibly hoping that most people won't bother to make a new Facebook account
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Facebook free for ~1.5 years now.
I'm Facebook and Twitter free forever. I have never used a social media site.
Steam (Score:2)
aaaaand THIS is why you should purchase 100% of your VR games from Steam instead of $proprietary_store.
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Re:Steam (Score:5, Informative)
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Too bad we can't use Google Cardboard with an Android phone or an iPhone, at least for sit-down, keyboard+mouse VR games (think first-person shooters). It would greatly increase the number of VR users, but I'm not sure if the built-in compass and accelerometers are enough.
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Link: https://support.riftcat.com/hc... [riftcat.com]
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Yeah! That is totally not sarcasm!
Nope... (Score:2)
...Do Not Want. I'm extremely pleased I didn't buy one of those.
Shocked (Score:2, Funny)
I had the DK2 (Score:2)
... and if Facebook is required, I'll never own an Oculus again.
I AM JACK'S TOTAL LACK OF SURPRISE (Score:3, Funny)
It's okay, you don't have to all line up apologizing for telling me I would turn out to be be wrong about this.
Did Myopic Group Think save Yahoo? (Score:2)
or perhaps Windows MR can be tied to your Geocities account.
Why bother with this (Score:1)
The writing was on the walls some time ago.. I used to have DX2 and it was OK, saying that I sold the device when Facebook purchases them and never looked back at this product.
Forsight (Score:2)
Anybody who bought into the Oculus ecosystem and didn't see this coming deserves what they get.
This was an obvious development from the beginning.
Just Say No, to tracking. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Search: Ted Kaczynski
Re: (Score:1)
Ted was a hard right whackjob who believed that liberals were the root cause of all evil, and he spent most of his manifesto ranting against homosexuals, liberals, etc., claiming that they suffered from an inferiority complex that made it impossible for them to ever be good citizens, and the best thing to do would be to round them all up.
Please fuck off, fascist.
TK was a piece of shit, and he also didn't rail against industrial society--he only said that we went through the industrial revolution too quickly
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Search: Ted Kaczynski
He got caught and is now living out his 'life' in a Super Max federal prison, so maybe he wasn't as untrackable as he thought.
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He got caught and is now living out his 'life' in a Super Max federal prison, so maybe he wasn't as untrackable as he thought.
I did. He'd probably remain untrackable if he didn't feel the need to publish a manifesto.
The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno pushed for the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, which led to a tip from Kaczynski's brother David, who recognized the writing style.
Well, that's one way... (Score:5, Funny)
...to put a new Rift between themselves and their community.
OK then! (Score:3)
A great excuse not to buy something I wasn't going to buy anyway.
I'll just call mine "Privacy Rapists 1.0 Account" (Score:2)
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I'll just call mine "Privacy Rapists 1.0 Account"
I get you're kidding but you can't do that without triggering the verify and need to tie to real identity. They don't let you use none real looking identities and ask for things to fingerprint you and flag everything eventually that can't be confirmed as tested by one of my family they seem to flag legit looking ID's that you go out of your way to never contaminate (thus can't be linked to your fingerprint). They print you not by what details you consciously give them but everything else. Whether they go as
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh, I have a Valve Index, and before that a Vive.
I just refuse to do business with Facebook, or do anything that contributes to them in any way. My firewall is configured to drop any traffic to/from them or any of their holdings directly in the trash.
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Since I'm aware of my ability to not stop this, nor that I have information that would reasonably affect my life having googlelordfacebookgodiphone have that information, unless some massive movement started with tons of people, I'm going to embrace the way they're paving for some really cool social products that could be in VR, and them pushing further development for VR which will result in cooler and better VR games, resolutions and more.
People who won't buy a VR headset because it's tied to facebook, probably weren't going to buy one anyway, they are expensive, and you need to have a desire for that kind of world. If you do, you're going to spend the money anyway, and if sweet social products and VR worlds happen you'll just want more.
Couldn't disagree more. The current HMD situation is an outlier actively being remedied by standardization efforts like OpenXR. When the HMD is a fungible commodity something that is virtually guaranteed to happen at this point tying HMDs to a social platform will seem as ridiculous, foreign and unacceptable as tying a monitor or keyboard to one.
There is no reason in hell to today accept this shit from anyone especially Facebook. Tomorrow there will be even less of one.
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Which is just part of reinforcing the parent posts point. Most people don't look at linking a Facebook account to an Oculus as having to "accept this shit" they see it roughly the same as linking a Fire stick to Amazon, or a Google Home device to a Google account etc etc.
Would I prefer VR not to be dominated by a single monolithic data aggregation firm? Of course, but the idea that VR headsets are outliers comparable to
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Most people don't look at linking a Facebook account to an Oculus as having to "accept this shit" they see it roughly the same as linking a Fire stick to Amazon, or a Google Home device to a Google account etc etc.
What I said was that there is no reason to accept this behavior from an HMD vendor. I didn't conduct a poll to see how many care about the behavior neither would outcome of such a poll be in any way relevant to my remarks. If nobody cares or everyone cares it makes no difference there is still no reason to accept the behavior.
Standardization is coming to VR and will significantly affect the VR software and hardware market going forward.
Standardization helps both software and hardware vendors access larger
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Anyone who has seen any anime or anything with a TV show relating to VR, the biggest hook on it, is it's social aspect. Interacting with your friends in VR, visiting VR social locations.More interactions with people using VR is what it's about. Then you add games to it.
Honestly, I couldn't disagree more. Pop culture may push VR in that direction but for me it's been more about immersion in single player games, and I love that aspect of it. Mind you I also love single player games in general. People suck. Introverts rule.
I do however agree this was the natural direction this would go. Facebook already guilt you into signing up when you setup your device, telling you all sorts of social features wouldn't work with the Oculus account. Honestly my only question is why it took
And this is why I will never buy Oculus (Score:1)
Because I won't use Facebook.
Not Now
Not Ever.
Suck it Zuckerberg!
What did people THINK would happen... (Score:2)
... when FB bought Oculus? Surprised this isn't already true.
Seems this is "easy" to circumvent... (Score:1)
Why won't this just lead to a lot of "throwaway" duplicate Facebook accounts? Or was the idea to increase FB user numbers?
Facebook killed my boner (Score:1)
Guess I am doomed (Score:1)
I really dislike this Facebook requirement but at the same time, the first thing that really interests my use of VR is close to dropping - Star Wars Squadrons.
Will try on PSVR first and see if it's OK, but really want to use HOTAS controllers and that is PConly as far as I know.
I am surprised it took this long (Score:1)
Well, that shoved me off the fence (Score:2)
But to require me to link it to a Facebook account?
Nope. HARD PASS. Now I'm glad I did not spend that money back in March.
me too (Score:2)
won't be buying one now.
OpenXR standardization can't come soon enough (Score:3)
I'm tired of every VR HMD vendor under the sun promoting a different platform and mandatory store / cyber stalking operation tied to it. Every piece of VR software should be able to work with every piece of VR hardware without any bullshit.
Nobody would accept requiring a (Facebook) account to use a Keyboard, Mouse (ESAD Razer) or Monitor. There is no reason on earth VR HMDs should be any different.
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There is money to be made in selling hardware. But there is more money to be made in services. If you are just selling hardware, competition will drive the margins razor-thin.
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There is money to be made in selling hardware. But there is more money to be made in services. If you are just selling hardware, competition will drive the margins razor-thin.
Competing for scraps is exactly how every market should work.
email support@oculusvr.com (Score:1)
Well, so much for that... (Score:2)
...I was seriously considering getting one for playing Elite Dangerous (I have strabismus, was thinking seeing if it was possible to sign up for VR therapy and have that pay for part of it.)
But...nah.
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For me it's not FB per se, while they're huge I don't see them as any more or less invasive than many other companies.
No, it's about the implication - and lack of any apparent shame for - that every thing you buy now is merely a function attached to a data-harvesting engine. And it's not always clear which of those two were prioritized in the design.
I can buy a voice-control system for my electronically-aware home...oops, it's not just listening for the commend-activation, it's CONSTANTLY RECORDING and sha
Nope (Score:2)
When FaceBook touches something... (Score:2)
... And I just finally bought a Quest... (Score:2)
Well.. I guess will keep it in good repair and sell it in a year... I already quit Facebook and wasn't expecting they would put their stamp on this quite so soon but here ya go...
Will keep an eye out for a different vendor to replace it I guess. *SIGH*
So create a throwaway account, problem solved (Score:2)
What is this Facebook thing? (Score:2)
I won't use those things, mostly because other's approval and over-sharing are not something I need or do.
But, as others have said, good job reducing your future client base.
I was waiting for more things to be available in Augmented Reality / 3D before I purchased something. Mostly was looking for really busy, but nice places to visit, putting together a package, probably cost some, that people can use for a virtual visit. Today, that is even more relevant.
Lack of profiles is already annoying. (Score:2)
So, this spring I got "I Expect You To Die" on my quest. After a half hour, I'm like "My son would REALLY love this!" Of course, you can't have separate accounts, so there was no way to let him play his profile when I wasn't playing my profile. Basically, I had to play through, then I had to hit the Internet to figure out how to reset things so he could start over, because there's no obvious way to do that. This happens with everything, the device is cool, but it's as expensive as a console and nothing
No problem (Score:3)
I've no interest in either. It's a perfect match.
Banned Accounts (Score:2)
I managed to get my account banned years ago. I basically created the account on a whim for who knows why (probably to see a link someone posted), then forgot about it for years until it randomly got stolen one day and used to send spam.
Since I was dumb enough to use (some of) my actual info, I basically can't create a legit account now.
From the brief research I did, it is notoriously difficult to get an account unbanned. It is not in Facebook's business model to pay support staff to handle appeals and such
Huh? (Score:2)
Just makes VR look worse. Not that it looked good to begin with.
Re: Let me just say (Score:2)