Minecraft creator says he’s canceled talks for Oculus Rift version

What company isn't creepy these days? Google, Facebook and Amazon are a few companies of many that come to mind when I think of all the user data they hold, what they know and what they could use it for. Thems the breaks unfortunately.

I admire Notch standing up for what he believes in, but I just can't see how Facebook is creepier than anything else or affects the acquisition of Oculus. It's not like the gaming device is going to give Facebook any extra information it most likely doesn't already have on you.

It is also a known fact that Amazon are trying to move into the gaming space, as are others and what better way to move into a space that is largely undominated than buying the Oculus? If Facebook didn't buy Oculus, someone else would have, maybe Google or Amazon.

People keep iterating the statement, "But Facebook aren't a games company" which reminds me of a few years ago when people (especially Steve Balmer) were saying that Apple isn't a phone company and won't gain any market share.

Facebook have the funds, talent and workforce to go into any area they choose. Look at Google, what did they know about clean energy, driver-less car tech, cloud infrastructure hosting when they started? Nothing. And now look at them, through various acquisitions and talent hires, Google have become an empire and this is what Facebook are doing: building an empire.

Through previous acquisitions Facebook have proven that they leave them mostly untouched. Besides tighter integration with Facebook, what has changed in Instagram since it was acquired by Facebook? Nothing.

If anything, this is great for Oculus, because it means they won't have to repeatedly seek VC capital every time they want to iterate and improve the product: we the consumer win out of this.

The backlash is unwarranted and ridiculous in my opinion. People complaining over nothing.

Notch didn't say Facebook acquiring Oculus was creepy. Notch said Facebook is creepy.

Besides tighter integration with Facebook, what has changed in Instagram since it was acquired by Facebook? Nothing.

You just pointed out exactly what changed with Instagram, and what everyone is afraid of changing with the Oculus.

"Log in to your Facebook account to continue playing."

Snark aside, people tend to lose all sense of perspective and objectivity anytime Facebook is mentioned. Especially the crowd around here.

I really, really don't understand the pathological and irrational hate for Facebook and/or ads.

World-of-Warcraft-like MMO games allow for "character customization", but on a moment-to-moment basis, character models are mostly static. You can read an explicit display of emotion if they choose to "emote" one, but there are no continuous subtle cues about how a person is continuing to feel about something.

Now, one of the interesting things about VR is that, provided your perspective is attached to an avatar, the only sensible place to put the "camera" is staring right out of the eyes of that avatar. This means that, whenever you're among other players in a shared VR environment, you're going to be constantly staring at up-close views of other people's avatars' faces, who are in turn staring back at you. So, if your VR equipment could read your facial cues, and replicate them on your avatar's face...

Basically: what are the advantages, over using Skype, of having meetings in a physical office? A VR office should be able to replicate those advantages.

The problem people have is that time and time again Facebook releases products, after massive amounts of engineering and research, that are focused on trivialities. Another way to flirt with people. Another way to post photos to the internet. A more fun way to read about the inane status update your ex-girlfriend posted about the food she just ate.

Look at Facebook's commercials, the ones where the person is on the phone reading about some random bullshit while they are at a dinner table with their family. Facebook wears their shallow view of human interaction on their sleeve: stupid interactions with your "friends" (ie, people you don't really see often in real life) are held up as some paragon of human communication. You don't discuss deep ideas on Facebook. You don't find information and increase human knowledge through Facebook. You don't experience new things or communicate with people outside of your comfort zone through Facebook.

Zuck gets on stage and talks about this world of global connections, and articulates this sweeping vision of a utopia where your whole life is enhanced by Facebook, but what we actually get are cat photos, fake cows, and people yukking it up about celebrity buzzfeed articles.

VR stands out as the tech with the most exciting potential of anything right now, and one that could be something that is driven by the entire community's imagination. Like the web was. The fear is that Facebook will devote its massive engineering resources towards applications of VR that are interesting and fun to 18 year olds trying to get laid, but on the whole not transformative for society in the way VR has the potential to be.

So fundamentally there are two questions. First, is Oculus going to have the latitude to grow its culture the way it was on track to, one which was centralized on applying VR in every way possible. On this front there is reason to be skeptical. The second question is if the environment for developing applications for VR is going to be an open, organic ecosystem despite the hardware provider being Facebook. This seems pretty unknowable, there isn't really a suitable analogy here. If VR takes off there very well could be entire platforms built for it, that recreate the computing experience as a whole. The fear is that this platform may very well be owned by Facebook, and will severely limit the latitude with which people can build experiences for VR.