In case you needed one, here's another reason not to buy an Oculus VR headset

 

As reported by The Verge:

Oculus will soon require all of its virtual reality headset users to sign up with a Facebook account. [...]

Starting later this year, you’ll only be able to sign up for an Oculus account through Facebook. If you already have an account, you’ll be prompted to permanently merge your account. If you don’t, you’ll be able to use the headset normally until 2023, at which point official support will end. [...]

Facebook also says that all future unreleased Oculus devices will require a Facebook login, even if you’ve got a separate account already.

Yay?

If you're wondering why Facebook would possibly want to add even more barriers to entry in the way of VR adoption, in spite of the fact that almost nobody has a VR headset or cares about VR, the answer appears to be

a) consolidating Facebook’s management of its platforms, and

b) slightly simplifying the launch of Horizon, the social VR world that Facebook announced last year.

Of course, Facebook's disastrous record on privacy and data security makes 'a' problematic right out of the gate, and 'b' is only helpful is people care about Horizon... which is so thoroughly not a thing that even I hadn't heard about it, and I've been following this shit.

GG, Facebook! Well played. With most of your customers having bought those headsets only because they could also use them with Steam, you've now spiked your own sales, and probably the overall sales of VR headsets, for no other reason than sheer, monopolistic territoriality.

UPDATED: Friday, Aug. 20th

Yep... This is going over about as well as I expected.

And, of course, Oculus founder and former Facebook employee Palmer Luckey took time out to respond to the controversy on Reddit:

I am already getting heat from users and media outlets who say this policy change proves I was lying when I consistently said this wouldn't happen, or at least that it was a guarantee I wasn't in a position to make. I want to make clear that those promises were approved by Facebook in that moment and on an ongoing basis, and I really believed it would continue to be the case for a variety of reasons. In hindsight, the downvotes from people with more real-world experience than me were definitely justified.

A few examples below so people won't make up their own version of what I actually said:

• I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift.

• You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift

• Nope. That would be lame.

• I promise.

The big winner in all this is, naturally, HTC, whose Vive headsets are suddenly trending again. As reported by GameRant:

The HTC Vive is trending on Twitter, and not because of anything it specifically did. The Vive's number one competitor made a blunder, and because of that, the HTC VR headset is suddenly a bit more popular.

Oculus is now forcing its players to use Facebook accounts to log in and play on its VR headsets. The announcement has not gone over well with fans. Because of this, many are saying they will leave Oculus and buy an HTC Vive, and others are claiming that when they do eventually buy a VR headset, it will not be an Oculus.

[...]

One of the most comical reactions came from the HTC Vive Twitter page itself. The original Tweet from Oculus at one point had 1.4 thousand likes, and HTC Vive's response of "Oh, we're up." had 7.5 thousand, indicating that it is awake and up to the challenge, and perhaps even glad that its competitor is making what seems to be a misstep. HTC has done creative things in the past to help sell the VR headset, like packing Fallout 4 VR with Vive, but this may be something that was totally out of its control, and yet, helpful overall. 

Facebook, for their part, have yet to respond to the controversy. The cowards.

As expected, Facebook's move has both current and prospective customers vowing to switch camps to HTC, with HTC gleefully egging them on. Oculus' founder has thrown them under the bus, reminding everybody that Facebook did, indeed, promise repeatedly to not do exactly the thing they've just announced. And Facebook, whose CEO just finished an interview with the FTC over their antitrust probe into the firm, have given those same antitrust investigations even more evidence of Facebook needing to be broken up, and soon. Bust the trusts!

For any other company, this would be a disastrous week. For Facebook, it's just another day ending in "y."