The "good" and "evil" sides of the tech world clashed this week, with
the clean-shaven, youthful and extremely popular makers of the Oculus
Rift VR headset agreeing to be purchased by the evil, goatee-bearded, dark forces of the hated Facebook mega-empire.
Many
toys were thrown out of prams and as we see every week, there's always
one joke everyone furiously types out and thinks they're the first with.
This week, it was something along the lines of "FarmVille in 3D!
LOL!" that everyone raced to wryly observe first. Plus the fact that
legendary PC coder and unmitigated brainbox John Carmack is now a humble
Facebook employee caused many simple people some low levels of mirth.
These jokes were even funnier when they were repeated the next day, becoming funnier still by the third day.
But
mostly there was anger. Anger about Kickstarter being used to kickstart
a $2bn business, anger at Facebook chucking its money around again and
anger that the promising VR tech may eventually be used as little more
than a new way to get your mum to click on adverts for discounted
last-minute cruises around the Norwegian fjords.
Worst thing ever, for the next 18 hours at least
Those
writing beneath a Valleywag piece suggested Facebook was the "worst
possible partner" for the VR firm, fury was vented by those who saw
Oculus using Kickstarter as a method of not only building a project, but
building a company worth $2bn in a couple of years.
This was accurately nutshelled by commenter I'm Here Mostly for the Chicks, who said:
"At this point it's safe to assume Kickstarter in its entirety is for
suckers. Maybe the first few months it was a good outlet for homebrew
ideas, but all you're doing now is subsidising corporations so they
don't have to take risks."
Reader Greensky was a little more
generous about his criticism of the deal, suggesting: "Kickstarter has
led people to believe that they're investing in an independent company.
That their contributions are vital in allowing them to get off the
ground and to forge their own way. Oculus proves that there can also be
Kickstarters whose sole goal is to become popular enough to sell. Which
isn't wrong per se, but it's also not the nice heart-warming underdog
story that most Kickstarters use to get more backers."
Imagine a screen strapped to a human face - forever
On a more aggressively negative vibe was Economist reader Guest Sensation, who said:
"The very last thing humanity needs is a life sucking screen strapped
to its face. What a shame people are embracing this technological
'advancement'. Bye bye family time, hello 3D porn, virtual worlds to
waste your life in, and mass media control. Disgusting."
There's 3D porn? *Writes cheque for $2.5bn, phones bank to arrange overdraft facility*
This
is all a sign that Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has gone bonkers and
is currently on a cash-fuelled spree he'll eventually come to regret,
according to Pondbridge72, who raged: "Paying twice the market price for
Instagram and then WhatsApp was one thing. But this latest digression
into geek hardware while alienating the very gamers necessary for Oculus
to succeed is ham-fisted at best. Florid 5 and 10 year visions disguise
an I-know-better-than-the-market intellectual arrogance and
inability/unwillingness to take counsel from others."
Just looked
up what "florid" means. It's a real word. It means "excessively
intricate or elaborate." Nice one, Pondbridge, teaching people about
online fury and English at the same time.
STR agreed and was
baffled by the decision, eventually concluding: "This is a case study in
why no investor should trust their money with a company who has a 29
year old with sole majority control."
Billions of ideas
But
not everyone's entirely negative about the sale. $2bn is a lot of
money, and Register reader Stu is fantasising about how it might be
spent by the newly loaded Oculus team, dreaming:
"Well I've pre-ordered DK2, and am thinking of cancelling, but I'm
coming to realise that Facebook have injected a serious cash flow into
Oculus, hence would have a lot more clout in the HW market to demand the
screens and other tech they want - specifically it would benefit from
curved OLED, ultra resolution, very low latency, and very low
persistence."
Stu then suggests creating a throwaway Facebook
profile to use solely for Oculus (and perhaps Tinder at the weekends),
although he adds: "Adverts, well if that happens then I'm out!"
2,000,000,000 dislikes
Beneath
a Guardian piece entirely structured around how bad an idea it all
seems, comment turned to whether or not Kickstarter backers ought to get
a cut of the $2bn, seeing as they are, in some small way, the original
venture capitalists that set Oculus on its way to financial stardom.
Reader Unpleasantmilk contributed the observation that:
"People put money into it, to help the company build. Now that company
has been sold for billions, why shouldn't those who helped make it so,
profit? This leaves a bad taste, but that is no surprise if *uckerburg
is involved."
And ChrisKS wasn't happy with Oculus either,
raging: "Oculus did exactly the opposite of what Kickstarter is used
for, and didn't actually do what their stated aims were. Look at their
Kickstarter campaign and you'll see that the support was generated by
promises of open-sourcing and prototypes being built to
facilitate/accelerate games development."
"It was NOT supposed to
be their engine for personal enrichment, but that's what they used all
that money for," he finished with, probably hitting the keyboard really
hard and with a satisfied flourish on that final full stop.
Finally,
Facebook's flaw of letting the most thumbed-up comments float up to the
top of response threads meant Zuckerberg's own announcement of the
Oculus deal was instantly hammered by negativity, with Dave Woodruff
rising to internet fame with his 1,000+ liked satirical comment: "I'm excited to announce we can't innovate but we can buy other companies."
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