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Comment by nilkn | Hacker News Reader

How is it fair for Notch to be upset at Oculus being bought by Facebook when he sold his company to Microsoft shortly afterward? Not to mention he sold simply so he could check out and retire whereas Oculus sold because they actually needed to -- Notch's tiny little $10k investment wasn't even remotely enough to jumpstart the VR revolution.

As far as I can tell, FB has treated the Oculus project with incredible respect, and not a single fear has come true.

I understand there was legitimate reason to worry over the Facebook acquisition, but I still strongly believe that Notch (and many others) took it too far.

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> How is it fair for Notch to be upset at Oculus being bought by Facebook when he sold his company to Microsoft shortly afterward?

Not only did he address this ("I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that."), his public posts about it were fairly measured after his first response (which was mostly a few negative tweets):

> I have the greatest respect for the talented engineers and developers at Oculus. It’s been a long time since I met a more dedicated and talented group of people. I understand this is purely a business deal, and I’d like to congratulate both Facebook and the Oculus owners. But this is where we part ways.

It's silly to expect consistency in people's reactions to everything -- I doubt you are "fair" with every reaction you have to things that affect you -- but, regardless, "I still strongly believe that Notch (and many others) took it too far" is an (ironically) excessive reaction to what actually happened.

> "I still strongly believe that Notch (and many others) took it too far" is an (ironically) excessive reaction to what actually happened.

I don't agree at all. Your quote concludes with an attempt to completely sever ties with Oculus. I do not believe this was in any way a measured or reasonable reaction at the time. The nature of the underlying action is not changed by the fact that it happened to be phrased in a relatively respectful way in that particular post.

> Your quote concludes with an attempt to completely sever ties with Oculus.

While technically true, that again makes it sound dramatic for no apparent reason. Choosing to not work with a company because you're uninterested in being associated with what they do is not something beyond the pale, even if many others have no problem with that thing.

To take a topical example, did Jonathan Blow "completely sever ties" with Microsoft because he has The Witness on PS4 and not the Xbox One because Sony actually cared about indie developers at the time he was looking at consoles to develop on? I guess you could say that if you wanted some click bait (and I'm sure more than a few gaming blogs did), but don't pretend that it's somehow getting to the "nature of the underlying action".

I understand your point of view, but the Minecraft deal with Oculus wasn't even particularly public or well-known at the time (they had only been in discussions for two weeks before the acquisition, and it wasn't official yet). Notch "announced" it very dramatically by announcing that it was cancelled.

To me, this feels like an action that was intended to stir controversy, but I will admit I could be wrong. You may see it differently.

As for Jonathan Blow, I'll refrain from commenting because I don't know anything about that situation.

I probably would have pre-ordered the new Oculus if it wasn't now owned by Facebook. Now I will wait to see if any Facebook login is required, and how Facebook treats the Oculus ecosystem.

You're comparing something known (the Rift as offered up for pre-order by FB-owned Oculus) with something unknown (the Rift as it might have been offered up for pre-order by an independent Oculus).

Many details might have been different in this alternate history: price, timeline, quality, bundled games, future games as funded by Oculus, and more.

Unfortunately I don't know if any of us really have the information necessary to make a truly correct comparison.

Of course we don't have that information. If Oculus had not been bought by Facebook, it could have been bought by anyone include shudder Disney. Who knows.

My excitement for and willingness to spend money on the Rift was greatly decreased by the Facebook acquisition. It is of course still quite possible that the Facebook acquisition was a good move that will benefit everyone.

The device will stand alone without Oculus software (besides drivers), so you definitely will be able to use it without a Facebook login.

Facebook has a pretty good record of non-interference with acquisitions, especially in the user-facing sense that you're describing. It will be even more true for Oculus, because Oculus was not a competitor to Facebook like Instagram, and, to a lesser extent, WhatsApp.

Facebook buying Oculus was a two-billion dollar bet on virtual reality being the next big platform, and to have that bet pay off, Facebook has to play the long game, and let Oculus and the virtual reality market grow.

Facebook isn't stupid or myopic enough to require a Facebook login to use Oculus products. It makes absolutely no sense when you consider the reasons that Facebook bought Oculus.

I don't tend to make bets on large companies with dominant market positions acting in their own best long term interests.

Why not? That's a very strong statement. I could think of a countless number of bets that trivially match your criteria (i.e. even odds Facebook will not stop selling ads this year), that you'd be crazy not to take.

There are lots of reasons. But I looked at your comment history and decided not to jump on the "interpreting discussion threads as logic statements" train with you. Apologies.

Fair enough. Do you think informal discussions benefit from a focus on thematic engagement, rather than logical minutiae?

> As far as I can tell, FB has treated the Oculus project with incredible respect, and not a single fear has come true.

They haven't even released a consumer product yet. It's awfully early to say that it's being handled either well or poorly.

That's a good point, and I agree with you to an extent. But there have already been plenty of opportunities for Facebook to muck things up since the acquisition. The fact that they haven't done so in any way does count for something in my mind.

Also, I think the increasing pressure from HTC and Sony is showing pretty convincingly that Oculus would have been in a lot of trouble if they didn't receive solid financial backing from a larger partner like FB. The Vive has already pulled on ahead of the Rift in terms of offering a much more versatile tracking solution in the form of the Lighthouse stations. PlayStation VR is the sleeping giant in the room that nobody's really talking about.

Oculus is not going to be able to rest on their reputation for long and still win the VR game. VR is slowly becoming high stakes; it's not a harmless little Kickstarter campaign anymore.

If it's true that they're not making any money on the $600 CV1, then it seems to me that they desperately needed FB or a similar partner.

Ultimately, we're faced with a dilemma where the deeper we go into the Oculus + Facebook timeline, the further we move away from being able to predict what might have happened if Oculus had never been acquired. If FB does something to upset people (like requiring FB login), there might be a lot of outrage, but nobody will be able to say for certain that Oculus could have even remained competitive without FB. It won't be long before we reach a point where nobody will be able to competently know what we should be comparing FB-owned Oculus to in this hypothetical alternate timeline where Oculus was never bought.

The good news is that if Facebook does seriously muck things up there are great competitors who will gladly take your money instead. I just don't think there's any sense in condemning the Rift based on some hypothetical future wrongdoing from a company that has so far treated the platform quite well, especially taking into account the fact that we don't really know how well Oculus would have fared without the acquisition.

Yes they have -- the Samsung Gear VR. You wouldn't even know that it was associated with Facebook in any way. The Oculus Store is accessed via your Oculus account. There's literally no mention of Facebook anywhere (I'm not sure as I haven't used the particular app, but I haven't heard of the Oculus Social app on Gear VR being tied to Facebook either).

If Gear VR is any indication, then the fear that Facebook is going to mess with things obnoxiously is unfounded. I don't think we'd have as polished a product as we'll get with the retail Oculus version had the Facebook deal not happened.

For one, Microsoft actually makes and sells games and consoles. It's always been a big part of their DNA.

Because of people like you. He wanted out. He didn’t want to be internet famous anymore, being questioned by smug know-it-alls. And good on him. Would have done exactly the same in his place, heck, even sold to much, much, much worse companies than Microsoft.

I'm not trying to attack anybody. I sympathize very much with the stresses of being placed unexpectedly into the public light, and I did not and will not criticize his decision to sell.

Regardless, I wasn't trying to ask why Notch sold. I meant to ask why it was not fair for Oculus to sell if it was fair for him to sell. Asking this question is fair game since Notch chose to make his condemnation of the acquisition exceptionally public.

> why it was not fair for Oculus to sell if it was fair for him to sell.

It probably felt unfair to him because Oculus was kickstarted by gamers (like Notch), and Minecraft was self-funded.

Since the backers (gamers) felt like they were stakeholders on Oculus, they probably were disappointed that Oculus was bought by Facebook, rather than Bethsida or Valve.

> How is it fair for Notch to be upset at Oculus being bought by Facebook when he sold his company to Microsoft shortly afterward?

From personal experience, I think we often are most vehemently angry about behaviors we feel like we are dangerously close to falling prey to. The closeted gays who are white-knuckling a righteous straight life are often the most vocally opposed to people who give in to homo temptation.

I suspect Notch was wrestling with those issues for years, and trying to harden himself against temptation. Selling to Microsoft wasn't necessarily a compromise to his values. It's possible that deal was fundamentally different to the Oculus deal in some way that matters to Notch. But it makes sense to me that he'd have strong opinions about how to go about doing something he was also struggling to figure out how to do.

People are entitled to their opinion. I think the issue is that due to Notches success people attribute more weight to what he says. In reality, I think his comments were just those of another Occulus fan who'd hoped things would head in a different direction.

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