Deleting your Facebook account forfeits Oculus VR games you already paid for | Hacker News Reader

Deleting your Facebook account forfeits Oculus VR games you already paid for

polygon.com

70 pointswcerfgba32 comments

Yet another reason why I prefer buying physical/DRM-free copies of things I want to use in the long run. There is not a single cloud software vendor I can trust to not screw me over in 5 years when they either force me to have an account (and this is a big push everywhere) or shut down their activation servers.

Yes, eventually every cloud vendor will shutdown. The question people should ask themselves is wether the convenience of having an app store where you have a X% chance of losing your purchases every year outweighs having to manage the physical/virtual copies yourself.

I personally have more money than time, so for me the answer is a clear "yes, app stores all the way".

I think this is where a change in copyright law would be helpful. There are likely very few games that are more than ~20 years old that earn significant revenue based on the sales of the game. Those same games 10 years later will probably earn even less. If their copyright expired at that time (or earlier) then it wouldn't matter much whether these cloud providers will go down or not.

With the rise in popularity of doing HD remakes, mini-consoles, and just plain re-releases on new platforms, I can't imagine that would go over well with publishers/developers.

> I think this is where a change in copyright law would be helpful.

The changes have always gone in the other direction.

What I always thought was odd - why has copyright duration gotten longer and longer, but patent duration stayed the same?

GOG is nice for games. Downpour for audiobooks. Any other stores you would recommend? Also curious what sort of physical backup/storage solution people use for their drm free digital items

GOG is my go-to for games I plan to replay game after 10+ years (just replaying the 5th RPG) DRM is only meaningless on the long run

This smells ripe for antitrust lawsuits.

Antitrust laws are based around competition. This behaviour is shitty, but not anticompetative. I'd look to consumer protection law (although consumer protection law on this stuff is pretty weak at the moment).

Iirc, antitrust can also apply to using your dominance in one area to shut down competition in another. I think that was the issue with internet explorer and windows, but correct me if I’m mistaken

That is correct, but in this case what is the competitor being impacted?

I am really looking forward to the revision of the GDPR and the overhaul of the one-stop-shop concept. Supervisory authority in EU will pool resources to discipline FB on a monthly basis. Irelands SA is as openly corrupt as Trump.

At least I know in advance not to purchase this device/service.

I had already purchased the Oculus and a few apps, so I can't take it back. However, I went into the settings on my phone and restricted facebook to 1 minute a day. Hopefully Congress steps in and stops these monopolistic practices. Bad Zuckerberg. Bad.

This seems like common sense. If you deleted any account tied to software purchases you would lose access. If I delete my Steam account I would not expect to have access to my Steam games that require their infrastructure etc.

The issue is that Facebook's services (Instagram, WhatsApp) have operated with independent account systems for close to a decade, and no one account should be required to use one service. Facebook (the app) is an unrelated platform from Oculus in terms of function, so this is more like if deleting your Twitter deleted your Steam games. In that context its easy to understand why people might be a little frustrated

I totally get the frustration but there's so much bundling already (oh lord if you delete your Google or Microsoft account) that this anger seems to be more about Facebook specifically than the act of having a single account system for multiple unrelated services.

I think it also comes back to the nature of social media accounts and not just Facebook. There's essentially no reason you need to delete a hotmail account, you can just completely ignore it instead. That means you never have a devil's choice of not deleting your hotmail account to keep access to xbox games.

Social media accounts are by their nature a large amount of photos, posts, tags, personal info that other people will see including employers, immigration officials, future dates. There are very good reasons you may want to delete it (and prevent future tags, wall posts) rather than just abandon it, so it becomes more problematic if you cannot without other penalties.

Right, but a great way to diffuse that anger would be to _not_ have a single account system, an idea Facebook seems to refuse outright. This is not a move a company like Facebook can make at least currently, given how little users trust them with their data

Great question. If I delete my Google account, will I lose access to websites that I logged into them with? Especially if its a Gmail account, I can't even retrieve with Forgot your Pass, huh?

Facebook isn't doing anything special here, I believe this is what the majority of stores are doing, include the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. In fact, I'd be curious to know which virtual stores do not do that.

Some differences:

AFAIK Apple will never lock me out of my App Store purchases and demand to see my passport

Microsoft won't take away the Xbox games I purchased if I use a pseudonym on LinkedIn or post Hacktoberfest spam on github

Steam won't ban me if I have separate accounts for work and personal use

etc

If having a Facebook account was less onerous and didn't come with as much overhead (for example, FB has banned people for making an account and not using the social features) I think people would be less up in arms

Amazon did this because I bought a bunch of gift cards. They permanently blocked my account, I lost all my audible credits and Kindle books.

No appeal, nothing.

What can I do?

> Amazon did this because I bought a bunch of gift cards.

What kind of gift cards were you buying? The Visa/Mastercard ones?

Amazon gift certificates. Like 10 at a time. They didn’t go through and I called in and gave verification that the transaction was me. They approved it. It was me.

Then they emailed saying that my account was accessed by unauthorized party and killed the account. Told me to open a new one.

Small claims court

This is the problem entirely. If I could create a throw away FB account to use for my VR devices and games, there would be no issue for me.

Can you create throwaway facebook accounts? I've always head stories of people doing this then something happens and they are closed.

it's a violation of the FB TOS

Are you aware of other services that require government-issued ID in order to maintain an account? That seems special to me.

Amazon

They have always required the same account to use those stores. Only the Microsoft store doesn't require a login at all.

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