Facebook's Oculus deal leaves game makers, Kickstarter investors enraged

Facebook today announced that it was buying the creator of 3D virtual reality goggles Oculus Rift VR for $2 billion. The deal is the second biggest acquisition by the company after the $19 billion WhatsApp deal.   The deal has obviously raised valid questions like what is Oculus Rift, why is Facebook interested in virtual reality to say the least? And while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and the team at Oculus Rift are definitely happy about the deal, not everyone isn’t actually rejoicing.   One of the most scathing criticisms of the deal has come from creator of the hit game Minecraft, Markus Persson, better known as notch. He tweeted that he was cancelling the Oculus rift deal for Minecraft as Facebook creeps him out.      He also wrote a detailed blogpost explaining why he was unhappy with the decision. He wrote, “Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers…Don’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend’s avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you’re actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?”… But I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.   He also wrote that while he wanted to work with VR, Facebook is something he can’t trust. He wrote, “I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.”   He also added,“And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.”   Persson is not the only unhappy with the deal. Other people who had funded the project earlier on Kickstarter are also unhappy and feel that Oculus has been a sellout. They have been posting their comments on the Kickstarter page.   According to Mashable, Michael Cooper wrote, “What in hell was the point of Kickstarter if you sell out to a giant company like Facebook?”   Another comment said, “I would have NEVER given a single cent of my money to Oculus if I had known you were going to sell out to Facebook. You sold all of us out. I hope this backfires horribly for Oculus and Facebook. I will personally discourage absolutely anyone I know from buying what was once an indie dream and is now a soulless corporate cash cow. God, I want a refund so badly.”