Markus “Notch” Persson is the owner of Mojang, the company behind Minecraft and he has also announced he has decided to part ways with Oculus after they were purchased by Facebook. Notch explains his reasons in a blog post entitled : Virtual Reality is going to change the world.
A few things are clear from the blog post, Notch is very excited about virtual reality and he was very excited about Oculus Rift too. How excited you may ask, well on the Kickstarter page for Oculus Rift, those who pledged over $5,000 got all the goodies backers at other levels got plus:
VISIT OCULUS FOR THE DAY : We’ll fly you out to the Oculus lab where you’ll spend a day hanging out with the team and checking out all of our latest work (and maybe playing a few games too). You’ll also receive a developer kit, a copy of Doom 3 BFG, Developer Center access, the t-shirt, and the poster, all signed by the entire Oculus team, in person.
Notch qualified for that offer, although he’s not a US resident as far as I know, so I’m not sure how he sneaked in, but hey, he pledged funds for this kickstarter, but, as he explains in his blog post, the Facebook purchase changed the game :
Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build.
Don’t get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend’s avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you’re actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?
But I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games.
In some ways it may have been better had Notch waited to see what transpired, but as someone who put his money where his mouth is on this product, I certainly respect his view and as I’ve said on these pages before, I’m not Facebook’s greatest fan.
However there’s more, something more in line with the disappointment other Kickstarter backers have expressed too, Notch says :
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.
And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.
That last line about not having donated to Oculus for a Facebook acquisition has been mentioned time after time after time on the Kickstarter page and that’s why I still feel, they should be providing the option of refunds because this undermines the whole spirit of Kickstarter, it’s not supposed to be about small projects being gobbled up by big companies in this fashion. Facebook could have funded this from the start, but they didn’t, those on Kickstarter did and now many feel like they’ve been slapped in the face.
I am very aware that i sometimes react emotionally and not “professionally”. This is one of the benefits of having no external owners.
— Markus Persson (@notch) March 26, 2014
Notch expresses his admiration for the technical skills of the Oculus team, how he’s still very excited about VR and he congratulates both Facebook and Oculus on the deal, but emphasisesthat it’s not for him. However for those who do want Minecraft on VR with Oculus Rift, Notch links to an app called Minecrift, which has Oculus Rift support.
I have a lot of sympathy for his point of view and the disappointment seems to ooze out of the post, but personally I think it’s better to wait and see what transpires, however Facebook really only have themselves to blame for their extremely tainted reputation in some quarters, although if they were to do the decent thing regarding the original Kickstarter backers, that may actually be a step towards redemption in some quarters. The opportunity is certainly there.
Most developers will welcome Oculus Rift, until something better emerges at least. Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has blogged : Philip Rosedale’s New Virtual World to Launch With Oculus Rift Integration “Out of the Box”, which is about how High Fidelity will embrace Oculus Rift.
A lot of people are now hanging their hopes on a rival coming to the fore that will blow Oculus Rift out of the water, some of the hopes are based on unproven fears of what Facebook will do to Oculus Rift, others are just not happy about how the Kickstarter campaign created the circumstances that ended with the Facebook acquisition, I certainly have a lot more sympathy there.
Whatever happens, one thing I very much agree with Hamlet over at New World Notes about is that Virtual Reality is about to get massive.