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Comment by yeukhon | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the sentiment, those who feel they have been betrayed.

First Oculus gave out the perks they promised to deliver, haven't they? That's the whole deal with backers. You back a project and you should receive the promised perk in return.

Another way to look at backer is to think of them as your first set of customers. I don't see why Oculus should return equity even if KS allows them to do so.

If the option was "give us $10,000 and you get 0.1% of the equity then would we still have this discussion. Obviously not. But the contract these backers signed up for was just the perk.

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I think the kickstarter backers are really both investors and customers. They are investors because they do take a risk by paying for a product that doesn't yet exist. This leap of faith from these "customers" allowed Oculus to create a 2 billion dollar product.

People are mad because funding the project through kickstarter created some expectations that were not met. Funding through kickstarter feels like you're investing in grassroots human projects, but this made people realize that it's really just business as usual.

> First Oculus gave out the perks they promised to deliver, haven't they? That's the whole deal with backers. You back a project and you should receive the promised perk in return.

You don't back a project just to get the perks though most of the time, you back a project to support a company grow and thrive.

IMO they clearly broke the social contract between them and the backers.

I don't dispute they want the final product in the end. They agree with Oculus' vision so they back them up. But why are people feel upset?

Two reasons:

1. Some people feel they are entitled to share the acquisition because without their early support (via KS crowdfunding) Oculus may never get that $2B acquisition, or/and

2. They dislike the acquisition and they feel entitled to have a voice. Like public trading companies shared holders should have a say in the company's direction and the company is responsible to maximize shareholders' profit

Either one or combined.

If the deal is clear from day one, which is that you, the backer, will only receive the perk as promised, and any penny you give to the project will be used to keep the project growing. But you don't have any say in the project, because, they never said they will let you be a shareholder. They are not going to discuss acquisition with you, because, this is a private company. Fan support is essential to keep a project like this growing. But business is business. If you think you are better off with some extra $$ in your pocket and getting a powerful parent looking after your project at the same time, you probably should take the acquisition.

You are unreasonably conflating the legal situation and people's moral expectations. No one doubts that Oculus had every legal right to do what they did. People just feel it was unethical.

I'd replace unethical wth the word jealous. They see big money and want in on it. They fulfilled their kickstarter and they are not forever in debt to the whims of their backers.

Not really. The problem is not an aquisition per se, it's an aquisition by Facebook (one of my friends, a backer, put it as 'the only thing worse would have been Zynga').

Imagine there is a company who you don't trust at all and who, in your eyes, has a history of betraying their users (in this case, with the changes and defaults in privacy settings, and the web stalking... ).

Now imagine this company buying a company you care about, who had the air of being honest and open and which you trusted. Since you do not trust the first company, you can now effectively no longer use the product of the second.

(While this may look a bit like paranoia, I know people who think like this.)

Unethical? Moral expectations?

You choose to use a product. The company can be acquired or shutdown. So making either decision is now unethical? How do people do business now?

You choose to backup Oculus and know from the beginning you are not going to have a say in the business' future, so where is the moral and ethic responsibility? What would be unethical? Take the "seed" money and run away without delivering a product. Oculus delivered a prototype and they didn't run away.

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