There have been a lot of reactions to the purchase of Oculus VR by Facebook in the last 24 hours, much of it polemic and apocalyptic. Our own reactions ranged from guarded optimism to cautious disappointment, while Minecraft creator Notch immediately canned an Oculus-focused version of Minecraft. EVE: Online developer CCP, on the other hand, has expressed support for the purchase and say that release plans for the VR starfighter game EVE: Valkyrie won't be changing.
"We're very excited for our friends and colleagues at Oculus," CCP told Eurogamer . "We share their vision about the future of VR and gaming and are looking forward to participating in the consumer launch of the Oculus Rift with EVE: Valkyrie."
CCP's sentiments were mostly echoed by the developers featured in a round-up of opinions over at Polygon . A few were negative, but many were excited by the news. "Palmer [Luckey, founder of Oculus VR] has always said that VR is going to be huge outside the gaming sphere, and I guess this just goes to show that Mark Zuckerberg believes him," E McNeill, developer of Darknet, told Polygon. "As much as I enjoyed seeing Oculus as a scrappy underdog, they were never going to stay that way for long. They've been wonderful to me as an indie dev so far, and I'm just hoping that this won't change them too much."
Perhaps the most disappointed place on the internet since yesterday has been the community of Kickstarter backers, fans, and developers at the r/Oculus subreddit. Luckey has been swamped with negative feedback as he tried to explain the decision , going so far as an unfortunate analogy that left him defending Darth Vader's decision to turn to the dark side of the force.
Whatever happens between Oculus and Facebook in the long run, both parties have made it clear that nothing is changing in the short-term. If nothing else, this deal will result in a much better consumer version of the Oculus Rift: “This deal is going to immediately accelerate a lot of plans that were languishing on our wishlist, and the resulting hardware will be better AND cheaper,” Luckey wrote in a post to reddit. “We have the resources to create custom hardware now, not just rely on the scraps of the mobile phone industry.”
