Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson has decided to cancel Oculus Rift support for his game, in light of Facebook’s recent acquisition of the VR headset company. Persson dished out various reasons why he’s lost interest in bringing Minecraft to the Oculus Rift– the more notable being the widely shared sentiment of trust issues.
“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,” wrote Persson on his personal blog. He then went on to clarify that he has no bad blood towards Oculus VR nor Facebook in his decision to halt all Oculus Rift support moving forward:
“I have the greatest respect for the talented engineers and developers at Oculus. It’s been a long time since I met a more dedicated and talented group of people. I understand this is purely a business deal, and I’d like to congratulate both Facebook and the Oculus owners. But this is where we part ways.”
Whoa. Those are pretty loaded statements by one of the biggest players in the game industry. Oculus VR is also in bed rather closely with id Software, Epic Games, and Valve, so you have to wonder what this Facebook deal means to those relationships as well. Do you think anyone else will pull their support of the Oculus Rift due to today’s developments? Let us know in the comments.
HT: Notch.net
Facebook only wants to spam ads…..
how is not supporting the rift because facebook is covering development costs going to seem anything other than hypocritical coming from someone with a facebook version of their game?
is minecraft for the facebook not the same game?
Facebook is turning into the Disney of technology and internet basis. “If you can’t beat them… Don’t even bother to try, just buy them”.
I didn’t think notch was the one in charge to make these decisions. I thought he sold the game’s rights to mojang.
I wonder if he is going to try to work with Sony’s VR headset Morpheus instead.
I see Notch’s point. For those of you above who don’t understand, it is like this: Facebook now owns Oculus. What is going to happen is they will start making Facebook policies Oculus policies. WE all know how pathetic and exposed to risk Facebook security poses for users already. Notch doesn’t want MC users swamped with in-game ads, the MC gang embraces players who mod the game and even at times uses player mods to make the game as a whole better. Whereas FB gets huffy and squashes any attempt to help make their product better or more secure. If FB had remained a silent partner or publicly made clear their intention to be a owner in name only (yeah right!!) then it might be different.
I love the push to VR and Oculus looks to be the most recent giant step into full immersion, but with an invasive corporate backer like FB, it may scare most avid users away and cause unecessary delays in VR development.
I feel bad for the folks at Oculus now. Alot of the guys that make up the development team are uninvolved with these politics and are going to suffer whatever implications come along with this regardless of their views on the matter. I think.
Oculus isn’t the only VR in town. GamefaceLabs.com is better already
Im happy about this and I hope other games follow suit.Facebook is extremely shady and it take a strong person to point that out to the public. Im so used to publishers schmoozing so this is refreshing to say the least.
Facebook doesn’t make their own games so why wouldn’t you distrust the random investor, not Facebook?
I would not work with facebook. they just see an opratunity to put adds right in front of our face…
To be perfectly honest, I’m 100% fine with this.
I think facebook is shifty as well. I was recently approached by an investor looking to do a FB game based off of my IP and I flat out turned him down.
I’d rather have CONTROL over my projects, and I don’t feel like facebook gives it to me.
As a long time Minecraft supporter, I commend Notch on sticking to his guns.