If you’re looking at purchasing an Oculus VR headset, but aren’t a fan of Facebook but then you may be out of luck.
Earlier today, Facebook announced that all Oculus products, current, and future will be required to have an active Facebook account. If you have a separate account just for your Oculus VR headset, you’ll be forced to merge it with a Facebook account. While the company won’t start this practice until October 2020, once January 1st, 2023 rolls around, it will be a done deal for everyone.
Also, while Facebook didn’t provide a date as of yet, they did state that anyone who signs up for an Oculus account will only be able to obtain a Facebook account. Which is completely troubling for several reasons. As a parent, this is disturbing as I am not a fan of Facebook and I refuse to have my younger child on the platform. Facebook is telling me they don’t care and would rather put my child’s information into their system. Something to which I have major concerns over, as Facebook has been in court several times due to the company selling data (or just giving it away).
Now, you can opt-out of this, but if choose to do so you will not have full functionality. Which could mean anything from not receiving updates, support, or being locked out of certain applications/games.
You can read more about the changes over at the Oculus blog.
This is a bad move and one that I hope they’ll rethink and not forcibly enforce onto its Oculus users. There are countless people who at one point had a Facebook account but deleted it due to specific reasons. Now to have Facebook to require an account for no other reason than to use a product that has zero to do with Facebook, outside of ownership, it’s silly.
Looks like the Oculus Rift S will be my only and last Facebook-owned VR headset.
