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Comment by skore | Hacker News Reader

> "Facebook creeps me out."

Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation".

It's also noteable that Notch had been meeting with the Oculus team just two weeks ago[0], was tweeting about them in rather gushing terms[1] and seemed incredibly inspired to work on VR ideas[2].

He is now the personification of the a near universal feeling of betrayal in the community. Will be interesting to see how this develops.

[0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/443541395543162880

[1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/443461570195378177

[2] https://twitter.com/notch/status/446312677745254400

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Indeed, nice to see Notch take a stand and provide some sliver of redemption today for the thousands of nerds (myself included) upset about the Oculus Facebook deal today.

I can't imagine the Oculus team ever reaching their fundraising goal if backers knew the founders were going to sellout before ever reaching the vision they shared to get people to back it in the first place.

EDIT: Notch seems to have just confirmed the postulation above in his latest blog post:

"I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-...

Exactly. But this goes further and lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter or any other crowd-sourcing platform.

Just like facebook's Frankensteinian monstrous mish-mash of consumer/content/advertiser/publisher crowd-funding in its current state is a mish-mash that ends up meaning nothing in the end. You are not an equity partner, you really have no say in how decisions are made, you are not a lender, you are and are not a client (depending on whether they actually give you the damn 'thing' or not due to a host of reasons, going bust, running out of money, fraud, etc.)

"this ... lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter..."

I'm sorry, but where is the stupidity? Kickstarter is a specific tool available to founders/innovators/creatives that allows us to reach a community of supporters quickly and efficiently.

Like all tools, it has a specific way that it operates, and to keep such a new thing from spinning out of control, it is relatively simple and has few rules. Fortunately, we are all made aware of this going in. Backers generally pledge to receive a product. The creator benefits from early access to cash which allows them to build their product.

This is what happened with Oculus, and they have already delivered vouchers to all backers which they could have redeemed for the original developer version from last year, the current developer version coming in July, or the consumer version still definitely coming towards the end of this year.

I fail to see how Oculus gaining a parent company somehow "lays bare the sheer stupidity" of the system Kickstarter provides. People pledged for a high quality VR device, and Oculus promised to change the world. It seems these things will happen.

One of the most compelling opportunities provided by virtual reality is not just gaming, but it's capability to put us somewhere else, including in a virtual room with our loved ones. Virtual reality enables an interaction that humans have never before been able to experience - the ability to hang out in a virtual space with another person.

Facebook, whose primary goal has generally been to provide a platform for connecting humans to eachother, clearly sees the value in VR's ability to provide this new experience for us. As such, they've used their purchasing power to buy a stake in the VR game and help grow this new technology. Some day, we will be able to hang out with out loved ones, visit the doctor, or join a game with friends all in a shared virtual space.

This is a future made possible by the Kickstarter model, which enabled Oculus to get the start they needed to commercialize Virtual Reality.

Tell me again how that is stupid?

What strikes me as stupid is the huge number of people decrying this move as some kind of perversion of the original Kickstarter promise, or some kind of bait and switch. It seems to be the logical progression of a company creating a ground-breaking new human interface device. Should they stay independent indefinitely just because they were crowd funded? I don't see how that would make any sense, or why such a modification to the Kickstarter model would be any kind of improvement.

I think what's stupid is participating in a Kickstarter campaign and then getting bent out of shape when the company doesn't do what you want.

When you contribute -- note contribute, but invest -- to a Kickstarter campaign, you're buying into the perk you get and pretty much nothing else.

I can understand being upset that the company didn't do what you hoped, but considering it an investment is a bit of an overestimation.

I don't think that's stupid. Kickstarter contributions are investments, they just don't have financial payoffs. The payoff should be that, if successful, a certain desirable piece of technology or art is created. If a company shifts focus away from the aims and goals they used to attract Kickstarter funding, then they have essentially acted dishonestly. There is no legal recourse, so the best thing to do is complain and make them look bad. The behaviour you think of as stupid is really the only way contributors can put pressure on Kickstarter companies to act in good faith.

In the financial sense of the term, no, a Kickstarter contribution is not an investment. And that's the only sense of the term that matters here.

Sure, you can hope that the recipient of your contribution will use it in the way you want, and will hold the same values and plan for the company that you do, but in reality, that's an entirely unreasonable expectation to have.

The thing is, though... I don't see this particular example as the Oculus founders acting in bad faith. They made a business decision that made sense for them and their product. Sure, they get a big payday, but I bet they also believe that this is the great (maybe even best) way to make their product successful. The fact that you or I or any of the contributors might disagree is, well, irrelevant.

Personally, I think a lot of people are making a big deal over something that... isn't. There's a lot of hate for Facebook around, some of it justified, some not. The knee-jerk reaction of a FB acquisition being bad is getting quite tiring to me. Why not wait and see how it goes? FB at least seems to have a better track record of successful acquisitions that don't destroy the acquiree than Google does.

No, the financial sense of the word "investment" isn't the only meaning that matters here, because here we're discussing the behaviour and attitudes of contributors. Its unreasonable for anyone to expect them to ignore their emotional investment and only think of things financially. If they did that, they wouldn't have contributed in the first place, and Oculus would not have gone anywhere.

Oculus benefited greatly from selling itself as the future of VR gaming. That was the image they cultivated, that is why their Kickstarter was so successful. That is why people contributed. The Facebook deal most likely means a big shift of focus to social VR. There's a big difference between hoping a company will share your personal values when it gets successful, and being sold a particular plan which is then abandoned in favour of a big payoff.

Point here is -- if you want a stake, buy a stake. If you want a steak, you get to sigh if the restaurant gets turned into a Hooters.

Me, I think Kickstarter is to fault for being sold as a tool for contributors. You go to kickstarter.com, it's like a shopping mall of the future. For what Kickstarter say they are, they should be a plugin that companies get to put on their website or something, not something that gets marketed to consumers.

No, that's not the point. The point is, when a company gets funding from Kickstarter, they are selling something more than just the Kickstarter rewards. They are selling an intangible good - a vision of the future. If that company fails to try to deliver that future, then it's a rip-off. Your attitude is like I tell you "hey I bought these trainers that were advertised as hard wearing but they fell apart after a week" and you reply "well you didn't buy a stake in the trainer company, so you've got no right to complain".

Kickstarter is not a store. Kickstarter is very weird, actually.

Kickstarter is not investment. I've never invested money in a company, but I've invested labor in exchange for shares; I was, thus, a stakeholder, and had a say in a number of decisions the company made.

If I buy a product off a store, a pair of sneakers, and they turn out to be shitty and fall to pieces in a week, I'm entitled to my money back or a working pair of sneakers. However, when you fund through Kickstarter something that says "Oh Hai Future Shoes", you're not buying sneakers.

If I invest in a company and they turn out to be using child labor, I can try and wield whatever powers I have in my shares to stop that practice. I can also divest and shame. However, when you fund "Oh Hai Future Shoes" through Kickstarter, you're not investing. You're not buying a vision of the future of shoes. At best, you can expect your rewards (usually a prototype of said sneakers) to be delivered.

But if they sell out to Nike shortly thereafter? And you thought you had an emotional connection?

This is why I kind of fault Kickstarter. It's just too weird a model; it allows fine, smart people like yourself to make unwarranted leaps of logic so that money flows that otherwise might not happen are made common and large.

At its core, understood as FAQs explain -- but not as the website in general is structured -- Kickstarter is a tool for business. Why does it have a shopping mall-like website? Why isn't it just an extension of tip jar tools for webmasters?

(I'm reminded of the Alec Baldwin movie with Jack Lemmon where he's screaming through a pep talk -- "TO GET THEM TO SIGN ON THE LINE WHICH IS DOTTED!!". This is what Kickstarter does.)

Bad analogy. You're describing a case of false advertising (or at best a product defect), which should be remedied by either a product replacement or refund, or at worst a trip to small-claims court.

You haven't really given me a reason as to why false advertising is a bad analogy. I think this is quite similar to a case of false advertising or a product defect. Here the product is the service of Oculus developing VR technology for gaming applications. Contributors feel they were mislead and I am sure many of them would want a refund if it was offered.

You're not wrong, but what you're missing is that the post you're replying to is a part of the process of contributors feeling out what exactly is Kickstarter. If founders are going to treat it as a source of seed money for which they have to give up no equity, then contributors will re-adjust their expectations and treat it as such. And giving seed money for no equity is a bad bargain, and it won't take long for contributors to realize that.

The terms of funding on Kickstarter are pretty clear and straightforward. You back a project for a certain amount of money in exchange for a promised reward (this reward is never equity). When the time comes you either get your reward or you get your money back. Simple as that.

...or you get your money back.

Has this ever happened? I was under the impression that the funds raised through Kickstarter are spent on the kickstarted projects. If after spending the money, the project "fails", how can there be a refund?

I'm happy Oculus got my money for the original devkit, and I spent several hours enjoying it. As far as kickstarter, it's hard to fault them.

Kickstarter is not charity. The people/businesses that raise money on kickstarter use the funds as an income stream. They're selling their brand and you're buying good feelings. It's a source of income for them. It's a product, an intangible one.

> But this goes further and lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter or any other crowd-sourcing platform.

Only if the projects backed aren't Free and Open-Source.

It's good for artists and small projects that need some capital but might not have very high ROI or might be beyond an innovator's personal means. I can think of quite a few electronic and music-oriented technology projects that I wouldn't have heard about and which would have struggled to find funding in its absence.

> nice to see Notch take a stand

taking a stand against Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and now Oculus ?

I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus.

Anyway, Notch has been infamously known for his quick rants (see the "youtuber he insulted" issue)

The best thing? There is really no other company you could think of who would be a better partner?

Like google? Or Microsoft?

Google would buy Oculus to integrate it with existing product lines, either Android or wearables. Microsoft would buy it for the Xbox. Apple would buy it to make it part of the iOS line. Facebook by far seems like the weirdest of the possible major buyers, because they have by far the fewest obvious complements to Oculus, but by the same token, that makes them the most likely company to be buying Oculus to expand into an entirely new space, in other words to let Oculus set their strategy rather than their strategy dictate the future of Oculus. It's a double-edged sword.

Yeah, Facebook is one of the few major tech companies who can buy Oculus and let them operate independently, since they don't have a stake in anything much related to gaming or VR. This means they are one of the companies least likely to screw with the Oculus vision, and I see that as a very good thing for virtual reality.

Carmack wants to build the Metaverse. Facebook wants to own the Metaverse. I don't see this as a good thing.

Eh, there's nothing inherent in the metaverse concept that means it must exist in an FB-style walled garden. Even if it starts out there, if it turns out to be of benefit to humans, eventually the walls will get routed around. FB know this, and intend to recoup their investment in the medium term.

The social network hasn't been routed around yet. And yet there's still something hollow about having everything you do shared with everyone you know that leads people to give their most bland, crowd pleasing personality to the crowd.

I was hoping for something more personal out of Oculus. Something I wouldn't have to think about sharing with my great aunts and the wider public via the NSA

Sorry if I'm not completely convinced by your half-sentence dismissals of those incredibly multifaceted organizations you listed.

I doubt the sincerity of your apology.

But if you really desire more convincing, all of those companies have large existing business units devoted to selling consumer devices or licensing things to people selling consumer devices. Those business units have executives, budgets, reporting structures, etc. It is very unlikely any of those companies would buy Oculus to run it as an autonomous unit, like Facebook is saying they will do with Oculus for now.

Apple does not have business units. Apple would also never spend that much money on an acquisition, so your general point stands, but your specific statement is false.

How don't they? They have people who are in charge of people and people who are responsible to others, yes? I just checked to make sure I wasn't going crazy here:

"A logical element or segment of a company (such as accounting, production, marketing) representing a specific business function, and a definite place on the organizational chart, under the domain of a manager. Also called department, division, or a functional area."

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/business-unit.h...

It's a term that seems so totally generic that I feel like you have to work really, really hard to find an organization at scales far, far below where Apple operates to find a company that wouldn't fit that description (Valve?)

But that misses the point -- the point is that Apple has SOME existing organizational structure around "selling consumer electronics," and that an Apple-purchased Occulus would likely fall into that structure. I don't think there's any evidence of a company that Apple bought and let run on its own for an extended period of time, is there?

The definition you link to is unusual in my experience of the term in that it equates functional unit with business unit. By your definition I agree.

I have generally seen definitions of functional units being responsible for a function, without reference to profit or loss. Business units generally refer to a notionally divisible unit from which income, expenses, and thus profits can be measured. By this definition, Apple has only one business unit, the entire enterprise.

Again, this doesn't detract from your point, it amplifies it! Apple really would never preserve a purchased business and leave it independent. It doesn't even have business units, the structure that might, if you're naive, allow for such a thing!

An interesting discussion of Apple's functional structure:

http://stratechery.com/2013/the-uncanny-valley-of-a-function...

"Would never" is less accurate than "has not yet to date".

Never say never. Especially with a company that likes to surprise...

Microsoft would buy it for the Xbox and desktop PC. They have been very good about making other peripherals for XBox work really well with Windows. I think this would have been the best outcome.

Valve maybe? Lack of output aside, they know how to "get it right" the first time, whenever that time may come.

They're most certainly not a hardware company, not only from the past, but how they're approaching the Steamboxes.

Google wouldn't be any better, and I might argue worse. They are more likely than not to just shut it down. Microsoft or Apple would be better though IMO. Alternately Valve might have been nice.

Valve would have been ideal in terms of 'companies who have lots of money and not a lot of people to justify their spending to', but I imagine that $2Bn is outside their price range. Last I heard they were working on their own VR though.

It would be a big step, but I doubt they couldn't afford it. They make more money per employee than Apple does.

how does that number mean anything when comparing a few hundred to tens of thousands?

Google ? I don't know, they have so many products that they acquire and then shut down. Also, they have so many products that... it wouldn't have been such a big deal to acquire Oculus

Microsoft ? They already have a gaming branch so why not, but for the same reason as Google, people wouldn't have noticed it much.

But Facebook ? Everybody around me is going to talk about it, even non-gamers. You have no idea how huge this is for VR.

I'd like to think Berkshire Hathaway would have been a good fit. They could expand into an entirely new technology sector, Buffett seems like an insanely smart guy who would get along with Carmack, and BH seems to be focused on making companies succeed in their own fields instead of folding them into existing lines of business.

Buffett is notoriously reluctant to invest in companies he doesn't understand, or which lack existing revenue streams. He's not in the business of funding startups.

Buffett is a very good investor for what he does. He understands very down-to-earth businesses, like trash cans, trailer parks, and potato chips.

As sad as it sounds, thats what makes business in America

That doesn't sound "sad" to me. I appreciate the existence of all of those things.

> he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus.

Let's wait a while before making such bold statements, shall we? It may have been the best thing that could happen to Instagram, but decent technology (good enough to attract John Carmack) might have had a brighter future without a new owner with possibly different interests.

Wha?

Why couldn't Oculus have been it's own company?

Facebook made it without a partner.

> I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus.

The two really don't have anything to do with each other. There's no rule saying that if someone comes out winning in business deal, then everyone comes out winning in that business deal.

That's a rather immature argument. Instagram, Facebook, and WhatApp are not really used by the same crowd in general. Also, I'd encourage you to do a bit more scratching on the term infamous. Hitler was infamous. Look, I'm not trying to discount your point, which is that this 'was the best thing', but you really don't have that crystal ball. No one does.

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481

For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR.

Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack.

EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it is to watch this video fullscreen and try to imagine any way that Facebook could add to the experience, or at least not detract from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s

It's hard to.

> scaling crisis for VR.

That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.

The "scale" JC is referring to is not hardware production. It's the virtual reality. Millions of people interacting in real time in a virtual universe in which they are actually present.

Think of it as similar to the scaling challenges of MMORPGs. Only much worse.

I don't think that's true. There is no scaling involved with virtual reality except the hardware, because the hardware enables the platform. "Virtual reality" isn't a single application, it's a bunch of applications created by developers.

No, it is factually true. JC on Twitter: "I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale."

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448631430533246976

If Oculus's plan all along was to create a giant MMO powered by Rift headsets, then this is the first I've heard of it. Interesting. I think a bunch of smaller apps created by developers has a better chance of being successful.

EDIT: By "giant MMO" I mean "metaverse from Snowcrash," not "video game."

Well, Carmack has always wanted to create the metaverse. And the Oculus founder has wanted that too. It seems this acquisition might be the best for their plans, if Zuck is on board with it.

Well Second Life is instructive here, I felt they ran into scaling problems. You could also consider Eve's non-sharded world - OK Eve is a game, but a sufficiently complex and elaborate one as to be a good proxy for an immersive virtual environment.

I don't know exactly what Oculus's plan was but it'd be foolish to ignore this obvious application, and that certainly seems to be where Mark Zuckerberg sees the value in it, if we are to take his speech on the conference call at face value.

After thinking about this some more, I think it's going to come down to: "Can they make their Metaverse cool?"

Zuck probably has some tricks up his sleeve to accomplish this goal. And he's been able to learn from G+ about how not to go about it.

Whether the Metaverse is cool will make or break its popularity. It's what made Facebook's.

The coming years are going to be pretty interesting.

Eve is also a sharded world, the system there just tries to implement transitions are transparent. The abstraction leaks sometimes, though. (Each system in Eve is a shard, and when events in that game happen 'at scale', scaling issues abound.)

Don't forget that facebook has an app platform. Even if personally I find all the apps loathsome the experience is relevant.

Floating avatar heads doesn't seem to be the future of VR. Personally, I hope the metaverse has users strapped into a cockpit.

That's what I understood as well. But I thought OculusVR was making a VR headset, not VR content.

Since when was OculusVR supposed to build the metaverse? I thought they only wanted to build the tools to access it.

Actually, I think the "scaling" is the money to hire the staff they'll need to improve their technology, in this time before they have a chance at a sufficient revenue stream to bootstrap.

Facebook-type users are a decade or more away from VR. They don't "do" fiddly interfaces and rough edges. Even if the hardware was there, the usability isn't.

Exactly, not unlike the reason why Nest found it ok to get bought by Google.

And not unlike Facebook/Oculus, Google/Nest makes perfect sense from the Nest side and very little from the Google side.

In both cases there are potentially large payoffs in the long term. But they're extremely high price tags for decade-plus plays in which the acquired company has little to no particular proprietary technological edge.

Nest makes perfect sense for Google. It's all about automation.

Ok. But how much realtime stuff has Facebook done? (IM doesn't count.) Do they have any credible experience with anything more specifically relevant than just running large data centers?

What kind of credentials do you need other than "large data centers" the scale of Facebook? IM doesn't count - so what does?

And PHP... infinite cred for scaling PHP.

What do you think is hard about that? PHP does everything you want for scalability, up until people force in second-system PHP frameworks that load and configure themselves on every new request.

Now, that old LAMP Apache+mpm_worker setup, that one was bad.

If they can get MySQL to scale in those data centers, I am sure they can attach a tv helmet to a large population. I still think Sony will come out on top though, they know this business better and have the battle scars with Microsoft.

Why does it matter, scaling realtime is just like any other programming related challenge. It doesn't take doctorate degrees, just a team of programmers who are willing to learn about the problem area.

It is both; FB makes a shit-ton of HW with their open-cmpute platform....

They have a lot of XP in building real physical shit these days.

Scaling traffic is a non-issue for them.

A consumer product like the Rift is an entirely different proposition with an entirely different set of challenges. The Open Compute project was essentially Facebook giving away some of their data center designs and specifications (mostly things like server racks and power management), with a few other companies joining the initiative but with none of the designs actually being used on a significant scale.

Also worth noting, the head of OCP left Facebook today. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2111680/open-compute-project-...

There are some other items that FB makes, which are not in the OCP though... such as the super dense fiber switch...

My point is that they are not strangers to manufacturing tech...

How much experience do they have marketing that tech? I've never heard of someone selling a Facebook-brand router. The few times I've heard of FB involved in an actual product, it tanked or disappeared, never to be spoken of again.

Facebook phone, anyone?

There's a world of difference between a potential item, like the FB phone and an actual, demonstrated item, like the Oculus Rift, so they might get some points there.

But their record ATM is non-existent, AFAIK.

And why would this be so much harder to scale than just normal MMORPG physics, which it is? The headset just lets you look at the rendering in a new way.

Second Life?

Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. I don't think Google has much internal hardware production knowledge right now, aside from the knowledge they bought when they acquired Motorola. Before that, they mostly made things through hardware partners like HTC, Samsung, and LG. I think they produce the Chromecast internally, but it's not much fancier than a USB stick. I'm sure they are quickly learning, but Facebook is also already buying up hardware companies and they have been building their own custom servers for internal use for years.

> Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team.

Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc...

It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook.

EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).

I think the idea is that Oculus VR is already in this position, they just don't have the monetary resources that Facebook does.

Facebook doesn't build their own servers. They outsource to Quanta and Sanmina. Quanta is the hardware OEM and Sanmina handles the racking, configuration and testing. Facebook provides rack specs and the Linux image. Facebook tried to design their own servers via the Open Compute Project but they ran into heat dissipation problems. Sanmina's Newisys division (which makes dense storage arrays using by places like Amazon & Shutterfly) helped solve their problems.

The point is that, while Facebook may be able to do hardware, servers is not a good example.

Disclosure: my team at Sanmina has been responsible for delivering the test automation & integration software for the rack assembly & test operation for Facebook.

For that matter, Google itself doesn't build anything at scale, either. Why would they? They outsource all their high-vol manufacturing to the same EMS companies everyone else uses (Quanta, Compal, Foxconn, Flextronics, Sanmina, Celestica, Jabil, Pegatron, Benchmark, Plexus and a handful of others).

Google builds their own servers, since at least 2005 - http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/google-uncloaks-once-secret-serv... and builds it's own switches, owns an ARM chip design company and "may be" building custom server chips - http://gigaom.com/2013/12/12/google-may-be-making-its-own-cu...

You're leaving out Glass, Fiber, Nest, Chromebook, and the 8 robotics companies they just acquired, among other things.

Of those, only Nest designs and builds consumer electronics at scale.

"builds consumer electronics at scale."

Made in China, as far as I can find out. They don't make hardware any more than Apple does.

The problem with grokking Facebook's involvement is the lack of any apparent connection between VR and FB's core competencies. Google at least can use Glass for ever-more data mining. VR? FB? Carmack can sure put the $2B to good use, but how it benefits FB nobody seems to know.

What's funny is that everyone would breathe a giant sigh of relief if, when asked about the deal, Zuckerberg just grinned boyishly and said, "It's a VR company run by Carmack, and I'm a multibillionaire. Of course I wanted to own it."

Maybe; but Zuckerberg didn't buy the company, Facebook did.

Zuckerberg has complete control, with 57% of Facebook voting rights.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/01/zuck-power-play/

This article could be out of date because it was written in 2012. It's been reported that he has sold some shares.

As a public company, isn't Facebook required to report how much of the company is owned by all major shareholders?

If Z doesn't have complete control, he's still got most control. Either way he knows that it's easier/cheaper to make FB the legal owner.

If you're gonna spend $2B to buy something you want, better if you can get someone else to foot the bill.

Except that Carmack and Oculus won't see a lot of that money. Oculus raised $91 million (2.4 of that from Kickstarter) [1] including a $75 million series B round last December. [2]

It's the investors who will get a lot of Facebook's money. Also, Facebook's stock dropped yesterday in reaction to the move and it's being reported that the deal is worth $200 million less as a result. [3]

The B round investors held it for such a short time it's almost like they flipped it to Facebook.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift

[2] http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/12/oculus-vr-raises-75m-from-...

[3] http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2014/03/26/facebook-sha...

"The FB deal" is likely an intentional euphemism intended to suggest its a partnership.

This is not a "deal". Facebook will own the company and can (rightfully) be expected to do whatever they want with it.

I'm wondering why people in general think this is some kind of facebook integration stretch goal. Everyone is photoshoping friend requests into 3D Farmville screenshots and it's humorous and I get from a gamer perspective, but from other professionals in this industry I find it pretty shocking. Notch is vocal in his opposition, but it really just doesn't make sense to me. It's hardware and an SDK at the end of the day, and now it's in the hands of a leading tech company this is vanguarding OTHER difficult problems of their existing industry (and open sourcing large parts of it!).

I have the DK1, and I ordered the DK2 not even a week ago, I've been active in tinkering with Oculus for a while now and even did some Twitch.tv casts of BF3, DayZ, etc. and other games running through TriDef or VorpX. I'm about to start working on a project allowing MS Kinect usage to be broadcast in an Oculus compatible format for web consumption by Oculus users. So I'm pretty "in touch" with the tech at this point.

I see this move as FB ensuring a healthy portfolio and healthy future stock price for their investors by getting the jump on patents and technology of a sure fire success emerging market. I don't think you'll have 3D oculus web cam video calls or friend requests popping up in your flight sim, that's just rampant and misguided speculation.

If I had a choice about WHO bought Oculus the top of the list would be Valve. They already have Carmack, having Newell in the mix would be amazing and ensure the tech was in good hands. Facebook or Google would be next in line, and waaaaay down at the bottom of the list would be Sony, Microsoft, or EA (I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it).

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance. If I was a company that made it big in the social boom and IPO'd but was facing a shrinking userbase on my life blood product, you better bet your ass I'd utilize my resources to diversify my business. Keeping your all your eggs in a single basket is a historically bad idea.

edit: also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK. Which I would consider FB pretty okay at... I won't say good... but okay will suffice, especially considering backwards compatibility for hardware/software of this type isn't a big concern.

tl;dr The entire community is acting like a bunch of idiots, stop it, you're embarrassing yourselves and showing your business management ignorance.

Calling anyone who disagrees with you an idiot and an embarrassment isn't good.

The central issue is that when Facebook begins to lose relevance, Zuck is going to yank the reins on Oculus as hard as possible to ensure Facebook stays relevant. You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration.

VR is in its nascent stages, and Oculus has been synonymous with VR. Now instead of VR having a strong an independent company with Carmack near the helm, "VR" is a subservient division of Facebook.

Whether that turns out to be a good thing, well, time will tell. But to call people "ignorant idiots" for being worried is a little extreme, to say the least.

EDIT: You're also mistaken about this part (as I was):

also based on these comments people think Oculus offers software... they don't, you don't play an Oculus VR MMORPG... they provide hardware and an SDK, everything else is up to content producers, the scaling crisis would be purely one of hardware manufacturing and distribution and maintaining a very widely used SDK

The scaling crisis is software, not hardware. They appear to be planning some kind of Oculus VR MMO based on Carmack's tweets. See here for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471231

>> You can see how Google did this with G+/YouTube integration.

This is exactly what comes to mind. Seeing how Google transformed post Eric Schmidt, makes me consider that even IF Zuck has absolutely all the good intentions of letting Oculus do its own thing, CEOs change, and corporations tend to get worse as they grow older (IMO), for some reason.

It could be all good, Oculus could be a great hit, a wonderful platform, all that everyone hopes. Then comes a new CEO with a grand U-turn vision, pulls the rug from beneath their feet and absoluty sinks the ship.

There's just no security, if Oculus kept control, than great, the company is the product, it depends on it to carry on. But Facebook just has the product, its just a leverage, second grade citizen within the corp.

>I would burn the hardware and pretend it never existed if EA bought it

I can't help but feel that is the same over-dramatization that people are having with Facebook buying Oculus. People like to think that EA is the devil, but in reality they are a game company and has plenty of resources including very smart people that could assist in bringing Oculus to market at least as well as Facebook.

They also have a terrible track record in utilizing those resources in their given industry, I don't hate EA, I hate how EA does things in regards to their customers and products.

- Origin requirements

- Online requirements

- SimCity debacle

- buggy release after buggy release

- customer support is... turrible

I could go on and on, I don't even buy their stuff anymore, BF3 is and was the last of their games I plan on owning.

All of the ways I can see involve Facebook being a supporting cast member, not a lead star.

A question: does Facebook need to only be facebook.com?

After all, there are plenty of examples in other industries of companies doing unrelated things and making a go of it. Consider Hitachi TVs and heavy equipment.

Facebook could launch Facebook Games to coincide with Oculus' consumer launch, providing a Steam-like service to pick up and play VR games, day one. Integration from this standpoint could be as innocuous as "Log in with your Facebook account" along side "Log in with your Google account" or "create an account".

edit: To clarify, it was from reading this, which I originally read as 1 month, until I read the tweet. "Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481"

ah.. 1 minute? I thought there was 1 month old tweet that mentioned FB (and obviously overlooked)

Today's March 25. That's when that tweet was posted. FYI. ;-)

nah, all the angst is because far too many nerds like to think they "own" up and coming cool technology even if they are not even involved beyond having read about it. When it goes to company that the clique no longer favors, usually after incredible success or the unwashed masses show up, then they act as if the world collapses.

It happens so often many of us just laugh if not smirk the whole time we watch the familiar process play itself out. Eventually they learn they are not the center of the universe.

This is upsetting because it means Facebook is building the software platform for the Oculus, not enthusiast developers or hundreds of independent startups. This has economic impact, and it's personally disappointing for anybody who gets excited about building VRUI.

Or, yeah, angst.

Facebook is building the software platform for the Oculus

The core services sure but why wouldn't it be like FB in general(full of third party apps and games)?

And how many developers have found success dealing with the FB APIs and platform?

There's a reason people only integrate with FB to try and take traffic, and even then they become the customer paying for ads. It's not worth your time.

Facebook's just buying the Oculus. People will clone it.

And then Facebook will crush them.

Oculus was funded by a kickstarter. I think Notch personally contributed. Having given money to help a company develop their core technology is a little different to "not even involved beyond having read about it".

But that isn't what a Kickstarter buys you. You get rewards and you get to help fund the initial vision. (up to the scope of the Kickstarter, fulfilment of rewards, etc.)

In any case, if making awesome VR a reality was Oculus' vision, they can make a pretty good case for that vision being well served by the resources of Facebook.

At the end of the day, what are people afraid of? That the newest action games won't be playable on Rift? I just don't see how people figure Facebook might ruin this product.

I was just saying that Kickstarter contributors are more personally invested than simple bystanders. If a company shifts focus away from the initial vision they used to attract funding, before that vision has been realised, then naturally the contributors feel betrayed. I think that's reasonable. If you sell someone a vision you don't believe in, then that's dishonest, even if it's not illegal.

That said, I personally don't know if Facebook is going to mess up Oculus. I imagine that what people are worried about is that Facebook will push for Oculus to be used for social VR and will largely ignore games. VR gaming requires high quality sensory experience in a dynamic environment with fast player movements. Social VR is probably going to be way, way more static, (but will have other demands like monitoring body position, face scanning, etc.)

> I just don't see how people figure Facebook might ruin this product.

To make the product valuable, it has to be a good platform which other companies can use.

Facebook has ruined many companies that relied on the facebook api to build their businesses. Sometimes facebook reimplemented someones else idea and then remove features from the api to kill the original company.

Making a product based on the Oculus rift platform is a high risk operation. Facebook has already ruined the trust.

Whether or not that is what Kickstarter buys you, I don't think it is unreasonable that people feel a sense of possession when it comes to projects they have backed. I'm not saying it is _right_ that they feel this way, but I can see how doing your own little part to bring something into this world could cause a person to hold on to it more than if they just bought something off a store shelf.

An obvious concern is that independent developers will be barred from developing for the Rift, or forced into unpleasant licensing terms in order to do so.

To be fair, these are people who funded the company in the first place, based on kickstarter's deliberately misleading marketing materials pretending that makes them investors. Generally when people fund a company which is bought by big money, they get a payout. In this case, instead they get the thing that made them fund it in the first place thrown in the garbage.

I think this move will really solidify the reality anyone thinking about kick starting something, you're not an investor, all you get for your donation is the possibility of receiving the items in the sidebar at the level you donated, the company owes you nothing else.

Thank you for this stirring description of the view from way up there, where you are.

I'd rather think of it as an indie developer who got lucky and struck it big making a pixelated block pushing game doesn't like that a VR firm is now part of a social networking company. My thought is good for him for standing up for what he believes in, but he is going to be missing out on some possible awesome to come engineering which previously might have taken years to obtain w/o FB's involvement.

It seems to be ignored but the massive pockets, infrastructure, and engineering at FB will allow Occulus to have access to much much more than they could have achieved previously.

Nah, it's irrelevant and will be a non-issue in a couple of years. Now that there are two strong VR players, things should progress much quicker. Consumers win. Hopefully, Notch will change his mind and embrace both platforms. Let's keep both companies in the game so the innovation doesn't stop.

It feels like Notch is being given too much credibility here.

At the end of the day he's a billionaire because he had a viral hit and was ready with a monetization strategy (and had amazingly cheap running costs).

None of this really speaks to his business or technical acumen, and he hasn't exactly done very much lately.

Nonsense. He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled.

This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.

If he does one other thing to completion, I'll buy that.

Even calling Minecraft finished is dubious, the official mod/plugin API has been in the works since 2010 and still isn't available.

A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.

Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.

It's been a few years since I played Minecraft seriously, but when I did they were mostly chasing low hanging fruit rather than working on hard or boring problems like modding, anti-cheat, RAM consumption, renderer efficiency or server administration.

Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.

Actually, the past 2 years of Minecraft development were almost completely spent on RAM consumption, renderer efficiency, recreating the renderer with an OpenGL 2.1 shading pipeline, switching from direct drawing to VBO's, creating compatibility with translucent objects, etc.

Since January 2013 they've spent almost the whole time on optimizing the performance.

And the only features they've implemented since where features people wanted really badly or features which came automatically – for example, after adding support for translucent objects they were able to add stained glass with just some few lines of code.

Good to hear that things have improved, better late than never.

> He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled

He has proven the exact opposite. He made a clone of an existing game, failed to deliver on almost everything he promised the people buying it, and then walked away from it leaving it to be never finished by someone else.

>This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.

Yes, that is exactly what it is.

Can you name a game that can not be claimed to be a clone or at least somewhat similar to another one?

I also noted that you did not mentioned which game he supposedly cloned. I noted that because when people say these things (whether minecraft or flappy bird or 2048) and I checked the other game, it usually turned out they provide very different experience.

He's referring to Infiniminer. Notch doesn't deny the inspiration[1].

[1] http://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecr...

I didn't mention it because it is common knowledge and openly acknowledged by notch. The game's name is infiniminer.

> At the end of the day he's a billionaire

Notch isn't even close to being a billionaire; he's a multimillionaire.

poor poor Notch. Just a millionaire.....

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