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posted by n1 on Sunday March 30 2014, @09:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the its-not-business-until-you-sell-out dept.

janrinok writes:

MaximumPC has a story that explains why Facebook's acquisition of Oculus VR has sparked an amount of animosity from virtual-reality enthusiasts, most notably from the original Kickstarter backers.

The article explains:

Is the hate unwarranted? Perhaps some of it, but many of the Kickstarter backers have a right to feel betrayed.

Take a moment and imagine that you've always dreamt of going sailing, but never had the means to obtain a boat. One day you meet and befriend a passionate and intelligent boat builder, Ted, who shares the same dreams of sailing as you do. Ted says that once he builds his boat, you'll be able to go sailing on it, whenever you please. Sounds perfect, doesn't it? But because Ted needs funds to build the boat, he asks you for a donation. Because you fervently believe in his vision, capabilities, and promise, you comply. After several months, Ted takes you out on some test runs. You find the ship to be shaping up nicely and can already imagine yourself sailing the seven seas with it. Then, all of a sudden, some rich executives walk by and throw a boatload of cash at Ted to acquire it.

Ted, by textbook definition, just sold out. And in doing so, crossed the boundaries between the trust and vision that you guys shared together. Still, Ted assures you that once he's done building the boat, you'll still be able to take it out on joyrides whenever you want, but deep down inside, you know the execs hold the keys to the ship, and you can't help but fear that they may wreck it.

This is analogous to how Oculus says no changes will be made to their original vision, though it's difficult to imagine a future where Facebook won't try and integrate their services into it, pester you with annoying ads, or steer VR away from its original open-source/mod-friendly gaming intention. If that's not an infuriating situation, I don't know what is. Is what Oculus did illegal? No, but Oculus did break a gentleman's agreement. They violated an unwritten rule. It's like a friend who asks to borrow five bucks, wins the lottery, and doesn't pay you back.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday March 30 2014, @09:57PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 30 2014, @09:57PM (#23297)

    I heard a rant the other day about how Kickstarter is a big scam because OR sold for 2 billion and nobody is getting a piece of it. I wanted to reach through the radio and smack that guy because he plainly does not understand what KS is. The people who put money into it were looking to get their hands on a prototype. That's it. They weren't buying a share of it. Now assuming those people got their kits, that's the end of the story because they didn't invest, they donated.

    On the other hand... I do sort of understand the frustration anyway. The fact is they did help get OR off the ground and the amount that all of the backers kicked in is less than a rounding error when talking about that much money flowing. They could refund everybody's donations and financially they wouldn't even notice it. Given that they hit the big time, it does seem like SOME sort of thank you is in order. Also the reason they'd have to invest in something like OR is the hope that it becomes a relatively standard piece of equipment on PCs, and with FB behind it it's unclear that it'll actually happen. And... yeah, I get that, but it sure does feel like they're a lot more mad about this than if OR had just folded up shop and died. I dunno.

    I just know that on all the KS things I've given money to this wouldn't have made me mad at all.

    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Tork on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:03PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:03PM (#23300)
      ... redundant? Why?
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @07:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @07:42AM (#23475)

        Probably somebody with a bad day got modpoints

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:10PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:10PM (#23306)

      I know that after this, I won't be donating any money at all to any Kickstarter projects. Maybe they need to change KS to protect against stuff like this. If you give some money to someone so they can acquire capital and get started, and they just sell out to some giant corporation, they should give all the money back. It should also be more of an investment, not a donation. If you invest and it goes belly-up, oh well, that's the risk. If they sell out, you should get your money back, or get a payout. If they produce a product, you should get one, or some discount on one.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:40PM

        by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:40PM (#23327)

        > I know that after this, I won't be donating any money at all to any Kickstarter projects.

        I have heard this phrase many, many times. Never after a successful project, though.

        > It should also be more of an investment, not a donation.

        Then it's best you don't use Kickstarter, because that's exactly what they've said they aren't at least since they made their FAQ page less chatty and more legal-y sometime in 2012. From the FAQ: "Project creators keep 100% ownership of their work, and Kickstarter cannot be used to offer equity, financial returns, or to solicit loans."

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Ezber Bozmak on Monday March 31 2014, @01:05AM

          by Ezber Bozmak (764) on Monday March 31 2014, @01:05AM (#23382)

          > I have heard this phrase many, many times. Never after a successful project, though.

          I think from the POV of many donors to Oculus, this has not been a successful project. There was an implicit understanding that Oculus was an upstart and facebook buying them is kind of like David gay marrying Goliath. Who wants to root for that? It is simply not the kind of company they thought they were funding. And sure, that's an intangible and not part of the official terms of the contract. But ultimately perception is reality and that perception of Oculus was responsible for motivating a lot of people to give them money.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday March 31 2014, @06:01AM

            by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Monday March 31 2014, @06:01AM (#23444)

            > It is simply not the kind of company they thought they were funding.

            Did they genuinely expect Oculus not to sell out if someone came at them with a ton of money? Not just for money, but also because of the burgeoning competition. (Valve and Sony are names I keep hearing being bandied about.) Getting there first means nothing; if they didn't give in to someone with deep pockets and a preexisting userbase they would have got as much mainstream market share as fellow pioneer Betamax did.

            Nothing revolutionary stays revolutionary forever. It either fails or - one way or the other - becomes the establishment. If it didn't sell out then it could either fail vs. the big boys or become a big boy itself, like well-loved companies Microsoft, Google, and Facebook.

            The more I look at this, the more I see these angry people as wanting the Rift to be "their" thing and never anything more, like hardcore gamers railing at how FPSes have been invaded by modern-military-shooter dudebros.

            • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:04PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:04PM (#23600)

              > Did they genuinely expect Oculus not to sell out if someone came at them with a ton of money?

              They didn't expect someone to come at them with a ton of money in the first place, that lack is the entire reason kickstarter exists.

              They wanted oculus to become successful on the original terms, maybe accept some VC after the first product had proven itself when the company had enough clout that the vultures wouldn't be in charge. No one foresaw this kind of scenario, you might as well be asking if they expected the entire company to charter a jet and fly it into a building.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:20PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:20PM (#23342)

        > If they produce a product, you should get one, or some discount on one.
        Isn't that exactly what happened with the OR developer kits they were "not selling" on Kickstarter?

        I'm not happy about this either - but donators got exactly what we were promised: nothing. With a side order of cool dev kits, a chance to get in on the ground floor of what promises to be (finally) the VR revolution, playing with new toys before anyone else. And showing the major players that there's a real demand - 75,000 crappy hacked together units shipped? That's insane! Do I think Facebook will do justice to the potential? Not especially, but it may turn out that they're like Microsoft - to software comes with a heaping helping of evil and otherwise leaves much to be desired, but they made some damn fine hardware. And I think it will mean a far greater early focus on telepresence than would otherwise have been likely, and *that* I approve of - I do far too much of by face-to-face communication via body language to ever be happy with phones, even videophones fall far short. A VR helmet, 6DOF hand controls, and a good API-level inverse-kinematics system could go a long ways towards letting me hang out with friends on the other side of the country for some good co-op gaming.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday March 31 2014, @01:04AM

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 31 2014, @01:04AM (#23381)

        It's not an investment. It cannot, under current laws in the US, be an investment. Even the microinvesting law that was passed has a much bigger buy-in requirement ($10K I think?) Kickstarter is simple: You pledge money for an idea you like. They offer rewards for certain levels of pledge. Once they fulfill the pledge reward (if there was one), your business relationship with them is at an end.
         
          If you buy something from a start-up retailer, do you expect a windfall if they sell out to a major chain down the road?

        • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 31 2014, @01:54PM

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday March 31 2014, @01:54PM (#23562)

          Why can't it be an investment under the laws? Investments don't have a $10K minimum; there's tons of penny stocks out there you can buy for pennies.

          Anyway, my whole point is that Kickstarter just doesn't make any sense to me. Why would I give someone money and not expect anything in return? Either I should get a product, or a share of ownership in the company. If I want to give away money with no expectation of a return to me personally, there's plenty of charities out there doing great things, much more important to the world than some VR goggles. There's lots of starving children and suffering animals out there which underfunded charities could help better with better funding. Why would I give a bunch of money to someone so they can develop their product, sell it to Megacorp Inc., and make themselves billionaires while I get nothing in return? It's just idiotic. What's next, kickstarters for big corporations to develop products, so we can donate our hard-earned money for some giant corporation to use however it wants and make itself more money with? Why wouldn't I just buy stock?

          • (Score: 1) by EvilSS on Monday March 31 2014, @07:45PM

            by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 31 2014, @07:45PM (#23723)

            Why? Because the US Government says so? Until the "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" is fully up and running at least. These are not publicly traded companies and there are some complex and crazy rules for investing in them. As for not getting anything from Kickstarter, have you actually been on the site? The projects have pledge tiers, with rewards for each (except maybe a $1 or $10 low-end on some bigger projects). You pledge, and if they make it (projects can, obviously fail) you get the promised reward. Done.

    • (Score: 1) by The Archon V2.0 on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:26PM

      by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:26PM (#23318)

      > Given that they hit the big time, it does seem like SOME sort of thank you is in order.

      For all we know they had one planned but not announced. Any goodwill gesture they make now is going to seem like appeasement, so we'll never know.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jimshatt on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:55PM

        by jimshatt (978) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:55PM (#23332) Journal
        If they had one planned, they should've announced it the minute FB acquired them.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:04AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:04AM (#23410)
          Nah, I'm sure they were busy doing something else the minute FB acquired them.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:27PM

      by edIII (791) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:27PM (#23319)

      I never even donated and I feel betrayed. Albeit, to a much smaller extent.

      The real issue is that we see new technology every single day that is always just on the horizon. Some of it is game changing. I saw OR not as a gaming device, but as a new kind of interface. There are some really interesting directions we can go with that, and neural interfaces will be here this century. I'm betting before 2050.

      Nobody likes mega corporations right now. Hardly a single person here will put one up on a pedestal and proclaim they really believe that MegaCorp is going to do awesome. MegaCorps have shown us that nastiest, pettiest, most underhanded bullshit possible by greedy filth running them.

      Open source isn't just some philosophy or fad. All of the people that are mad right now are mad precisely because they thought the technology was going to be free from the influence of the MegaCorps. That's entirely the fault of the MegaCorps, and it has been their actions that engendered such mistrust from the people. Open Source tends to embrace and promulgate views about freedom, privacy, and anonymity that are a lot more friendly to consumers to put it lightly.

      They should be mad. Out of all the cool products out there right now how many are tainted?

      XBOX - DRM, adverts, usage monitoring, etc.
      SONY - Well, they're Sony. Everything else plus a little more evil and hardware lockdowns
      ANDROID - Hardware lockdown a plenty and new tech from Intel to lock it down further.
      APPLE - HAHAHAHA. Yeah. Freedom reigns for the consumer with leadership from Cupertino.
      PC - UEFI lockdowns, see Intel from above, massive breaches in trust from major players like RSA, etc.
      FUCKING COFFEE MAKERS - DRM inside coffee makers
      GAS STATIONS - Blaring advertising everywhere

      It's a more than reasonable assumption that when a MegaCorp gets it hands on a technology that it gets tainted in some way.

      Instead of the OR being free from such nonsense, adverts and data gathering are very likely to be folded into this thing. That's Facebook's entire reason for existing; Adverts and Big Data.

      So yeah, it's pretty damn sad and there is a huge undeniable difference between a technology being lead by Open Source philosophies and MegaCorp philosophies.

      I've already wrote it off as dead tech now. Even I could get my hands on it this Christmas it will be tainted by Facebook and not come free and open like we all expected, but run with some horribly mutated OS that Facebook collaborated to create.

      They should get their money back. The original product is all but precluded from ever existing.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:02PM

        by jimshatt (978) on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:02PM (#23337) Journal
        Also, considering the bad rap WhatsApp got, I can't really believe OR went trough with this deal. I'm most certainly biased (i.e. read tech news) so WhatsApp may not have been a big deal for the average user, but the average OR backer knows better.
        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday March 31 2014, @12:11AM

          by edIII (791) on Monday March 31 2014, @12:11AM (#23360)

          Facebook going after WhatsApp as hard as it did is just like the really unpopular kid (like Cartman) embraces something new and trendy to become popular with the hip children, but not realizing the whole point was for the hip children to avoid him at all costs.

          A *lot* of people had amazing perceptions/misperceptions about how secure and anonymous WhatsApp was.

          The whole reason to use WhatsApp is because you didn't want to use Facebook, and those reasons didn't change just because Facebook acquired WhatsApp.

          It was pretty much the exact same thing :)

          Facebook instantly tainted and corrupted WhatsApp before ink dried on the contracts.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 2) by jimshatt on Monday March 31 2014, @09:49AM

            by jimshatt (978) on Monday March 31 2014, @09:49AM (#23497) Journal
            I know. That's why I find it unbelievable that OR went ahead with a Facebook acquisition. It appears to me that the OR guys (and especially Carmack) would know why a Facebook takeover would be bad. And equally unbelievable that Abrash would join OR after such a takeover.
            I *love* that Abrash and Carmack are working together again (I actually suggested this a few years ago (somewhere on that other site) when Carmack was tinkering with VR and Abrash was joining Valve). But I just cannot see them working for Facebook for very long. I know that Carmack needs money for Armadillo, so maybe he'll stick around. I dunno. But in the meanwhile I'll continue to be flabbergasted (if you don't mind).
      • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @06:46AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @06:46AM (#23459)

        Open source isn't just some philosophy or fad.

        Yeah, open source is a software development method.

        Open Source tends to embrace and promulgate views about freedom [...]

        Sounds like you're talking about free software, that's the social movement. Read this [gnu.org].

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:08PM (#23304)

    This is how kickstarter works. You give money for some defined benefit and then you receive it. No ownership unless explicitly given. That said, clearly many Kickstarter projects are trading off of the goodwill of being part of a community. In that sense, Occulus betrayed that.

      I thunk this is a good lesson learned for many people and will spur much more rigorous and specific Kickstarter contracts. E.g., "if we are bought out, contributors receive x per dollar"

  • (Score: 1) by hubie on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:09PM

    by hubie (1068) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:09PM (#23305) Journal

    It's like a friend who asks to borrow five bucks, wins the lottery, and doesn't pay you back.

    Is this true? Are they not getting back what they were promised when they donated? If they get the eval kits or whatever they were supposed to get, then I don't understand the issue. As long as the commitment is kept, that is all they can expect. Sure it would be nice, in a feel-good kind of way if they refunded all the donations they received, but I think it is unrealistic for people to expect or demand it happen. It sounds like the Kickstarter worked out just as it was supposed to for everyone involved. If you want to have a say in the direction a company takes, don't donate money to them, buy stock from them.

    • (Score: 2) by moondrake on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:24PM

      by moondrake (2658) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:24PM (#23317)

      Lets make it a car analogy so we can (mis)understand it better:

      A friend pays you something to design and built him a car. You sell him the car, and you use the same sign to take part and win first place in the World Rally Championship.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:09AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @03:09AM (#23411)
        You have no ownership over the design of the car. The money you gave was not as an investor.

        It's like helping a car builder friend out with cash the agreement being you get a built car in return. The design is still his not yours.

        If you want any rights you should become an investor instead of using kickstarter.
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Monday March 31 2014, @01:30PM

        by Rivenaleem (3400) on Monday March 31 2014, @01:30PM (#23548)

        Not even,

        Better analogy, Someone says he's got an idea for a new steering wheel and has asked people for money to develop and build it.

        Anybody who donates money will get one of these new steering wheels to try with their car.

        After they get all the money, make the prototype steering wheels and ship them to the backers, Toyota comes along and buys the inventor's company.

        It's amazing how people are completely failing at the understanding of Kickstarter (hint is in the name) You are helping someone get their company started, like the *gasp* Kick-start on a motorbike. Once you provide the initial kick, you are no longer involved in the running of the engine, as that is now progressing under it's own power.

        The same is true here. Backers provided a kick to start OR making prototype VR headsets, they got their Dev kits and now the company is flourishing and unsurprisingly got bought by someone bigger.

        • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Monday March 31 2014, @03:50PM

          by metamonkey (3174) on Monday March 31 2014, @03:50PM (#23619)

          Yeah, but it wasn't just a prototype steering wheel. Let's say it's a programmable steering wheel with a touch-enabled display on it. So you get your prototype steering wheel so you can develop steering wheel apps for it...and then Toyota buys the whole idea and locks it down so you can't sell or use your software on the production model steering wheel without giving Toyota a taste.

          That ain't what the backers were buying. It wasn't just dev kits, it was the idea the dev kit would let them develop for the finished product. Now there's no idea what the finished product will look like.

          --
          Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @06:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @06:05AM (#23447)

      They are almost certainly not going to get what was promised. A gaming-focused, open platform was promised, and a new social-focused, corporate ad driven experience will be delivered. People keep mentioning the prototypes, and how people just don't understand that THAT is all kick starter based projects owe them. Maybe you guys are the ones that don't understand: kick starter is very much an investment based system, but instead of monetary dividends projects promise to deliver on an idea. The prototype is an incentive to donate more, not the purpose and end-goal of donating. People that received a prototype can still rightfully feel that the goalpost just moved, not simply farther away, but to a different stadium and likely a whole different type of game.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:10PM

    by zocalo (302) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:10PM (#23307)
    There's currently a lot of ill will out there, both from those who don't understand they have no rights under the terms of their pledge and those who just don't want anything to do with Facebook. Facebook/Oculus could easily make some incentives to remain onboard alongside an offer to refund the pledges of those who choose to opt out. Even in the the unlikely event that everyone opts out, they'll only be down $2.4m so so, small change in the scale of things, a lot of the bad press on the forums will go away, and they'll probably even get some positive coverage for doing the right thing.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Archon V2.0 on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:23PM

    by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:23PM (#23316)

    Man, this guy does NOT know how to write a metaphor. Both of them appear wrong to me.

    I'm not much of a gamer so I don't really know much about the Oculus, but the dev kits have shipped, right? I assume so because I keep seeing people wearing black matte toasters on their faces on Youtube. I thought that was the backer reward.

    Did all the KS rewards go out? Because if so they've held up their end of the bargain, let everyone ride on Ted's magic boat, and paid back the fiver they borrowed, which is all that was promised and a hell of a lot more than most projects do. A game I KSed a year and change ago recently went on sale in a Humble Bundle. If I had problems with the Humble Bundle guys would that somehow violate this "gentlemen's agreement" that only exists in my head? (This is why we have verbose contracts and lawyers. Because few gentlemen's agreements are made by gentlemen.) For hell's sake, I thought I'd heard the height of entitlement out of backers before! Talk about executive meddling from Facebook all you like, but this sort of thing exactly the same, just with the masses replacing the money. The less people put in the more they think they have the right to tell the developers what to do.

    Besides, they've got the best canary on the planet: John Carmack. The man works there because he WANTS to. He's not tied to the need for a paycheck or difficulty getting another job. If the project starts to go south, he'll just do what he did at id and leave. THEN you know it's a write-off.

    Also: I wonder how many of the people with pitchforks and torches still use Facebook.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:32PM (#23320)

    We paid for open source, community driven. At a minimum free for all to develop software for it.

    This is not what Facebook has in mind. They have their ecosystem. They buy it to control it. There is no room for free open source development within Facebooks system.

    Oculus broke this clearly stated part of the deal.

    I'm not interested in their headset anymore. It is just a piece of plastic now. I want my money back.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by lajos on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:40PM

      by lajos (528) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:40PM (#23326)

      "This is not what Facebook has in mind."

      What does Facebook have in mind?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:07PM (#23338)

        It doesn't matter. They changed the agreement without my consent.

        They called it a "dev-kit" for crying out loud. It even shipped with development software as an added value.

        And now we are at the mercy of oh mighty Facebook. "Let's stay positive and hope our nice new masters are nice." This bullshit! We had a deal!

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:00PM (#23335)

      "I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further."

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by wolf on Monday March 31 2014, @12:06PM

      by wolf (2997) on Monday March 31 2014, @12:06PM (#23513)
      Wrong. This is exactly what you have paid for. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1523379957/oc ulus-rift-step-into-the-game [kickstarter.com]

      Pledge $300 or more
      5642 backers
      EARLY RIFT DEVELOPER KIT + DOOM 3 BFG: Try the Rift for yourself now! You'll receive a developer kit, perfect for the established or indie game developer interested in working with the Rift immediately. This also includes a copy of Doom 3 BFG and full access to our Developer Center for our SDK, docs, samples, and engine integrations! (Please add $30 for international shipping) Estimated delivery: Dec 2012

      This is what was promised, this is what the money was for and this is what was fulfilled (modulo Doom 3, which was refunded). If you expected anything else from that deal, then you are simply delusional.

      • (Score: 2) by metamonkey on Monday March 31 2014, @03:46PM

        by metamonkey (3174) on Monday March 31 2014, @03:46PM (#23618)

        What's the purpose of a dev kit if you won't be able to develop software for the finished product? At least not without swallowing some Zuckerberg cock in the process, anyway.

        --
        Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
        • (Score: 1) by wolf on Monday March 31 2014, @08:48PM

          by wolf (2997) on Monday March 31 2014, @08:48PM (#23747)

          What's the purpose? To build VR environments. To have a taste of things to come. To have the new cool toy. To show other people a new way of experiencing things. To put it in a display case and marvel being one of the 70k people who also have it. To build hype and gain investor money.

          Frankly, I don't know and I don't care, as anyone can and will have his own reasoning for it. Ultimately, the promised product was delivered, and everything else is just people imagining things. Now they have to face the reality. And while doing so, they again are using their imagination, assuming Facebook is EVIL!!!

          Tell me, how exactly is sucking Zuckerberg's cock different from sucking cock of whatever [oculusvr.com] investors [cnet.com] they had before? Do people really think Oculus had a full say about anything after getting these millions of venture capital dolars? On what world do they live?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:34PM (#23322)

    that do not hold up at all. First of all you would not get to ride the boat whenever you wanted. Ted would just build YOU a boat and that would be the end of your relationship with him. Your friend owes you $5 and doesn't pay you back when he wins the lottery? Kickstarters do not borrow money to pay you back later. I think of it more like a preorder. And what do you propose he do according to your Lottery analogy? Is occulus now supposed share the wealth now that they won the facebook lottery? Perhaps kickstarters should really promise equity in the company, but they don't.

    In short, I am personally bummed when facebook (and clear channel and google my other pet peeves) touch ANYTHING. But there is simply zero ethical, moral, legal issue here.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:44PM

    by umafuckitt (20) on Sunday March 30 2014, @10:44PM (#23329)

    The boat analogy is bad. In that case there is just one boat and you are lending the builder money with the expectation that you will be allowed time on it when it's finished. When the rich executives buy the boat, they are taking away your ability to use the boat. These things aren't the case with a Kickstarter project that's "sold out"

    The purpose of the Kickstarter project is to develop a product which will then go on sale. In many cases, such as OR, certain contributors have already received a unit in return for their cash. Smaller contributors have not received a unit, but have funded the project with the understanding that without many people contributing a small amount, the final product would not be available to purchase at all. Together, all of these small contributors have provided sufficient cash for OR to develop a product that appears interesting and viable. However, despite this, there have been problems with ramping up supply and development has taken longer than expected because of feature-creep.

    So enter Facebook, which "buys out" OR. Unlike the boat analogy, this buy-out does not mean there will be no final product for the Kickerstarter contributors to eventually purchase. On the contrary, the cash injection will be used to rectify manufacturing issues and increase speed of development. So a better product should hit the market sooner. Why, then, is everyone so pissed off? They are pissed off because they don't like Facebook and they don't trust it not to fuck up the final product. Whilst the fucking up is a concern, it has not yet occurred and may not occur at all. So I don't reckon this is the real beef they have.

    The real beef, I think, is that the Kickstarter contributors feel marginalised by Facebook's buyout. After all, Facebook have just come along and given the OR developers almost 1000x as much cash as the Kickerstarter campaign raised. Suddenly the Kickerstarter, which begun everything as a warm and fuzzy labour of love, has become insignificant. What was a community-driven product is now a faceless corporation product. That is what people don't like. I don't think it matters which company purchased OR, the reaction would have been more or less the same towards any company injecting that much cash into the mix.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 30 2014, @11:48PM (#23351)

      The boat analogy is bad. In that case there is just one boat and you are lending the builder money with the expectation that you will be allowed time on it when it's finished. When the rich executives buy the boat, they are taking away your ability to use the boat. These things aren't the case with a Kickstarter project that's "sold out"

      It's not a very good analogy, true, but it is in a sense also correct. From a certain point of view, there is only one boat here: the vision of the product as a whole. Who's to say that Facebook will not suddenly force the final retail version of the Oculus Rift to have draconian DRM that makes it harder for the community to do interesting things with it? Or put in a dozen hooks into their systems that are enforced by similar DRM? Or if they make other changes to the final retail version that the community that got there first wanted? Facebook certainly has the power to do that now if they wanted. Before Facebook got involved, I doubt that even the original developers of OR would have had the clout to be able to do something similar. Yes, there may indeed be a final product available for those who contributed to the Kickstarter, but whether it will still be the project that they were told they would get when they were convinced to contribute is not clear. It will now become the product that Facebook wants, which is probably not the same as what the original Kickstarter contributors wanted.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday March 31 2014, @12:01AM

      by stormwyrm (717) on Monday March 31 2014, @12:01AM (#23357) Journal

      (to add to what I accidently posted as an AC earlier)

      The boat analogy is bad. In that case there is just one boat and you are lending the builder money with the expectation that you will be allowed time on it when it's finished. When the rich executives buy the boat, they are taking away your ability to use the boat. These things aren't the case with a Kickstarter project that's "sold out"

      It's not a very good analogy, true, but it is in a sense also correct. From a certain point of view, there is only one boat here: the vision of the Oculus Rift product as a whole. Who's to say that Facebook will not suddenly force the final retail version of the Oculus Rift to have draconian DRM that makes it harder for the community to do interesting things with it? Or put in a dozen hooks into their systems that are enforced by similar DRM? Or if they make other changes to the final retail version that the community that got there first wanted? Facebook certainly has the power to do that now if they wanted. Before Facebook got involved, I doubt that even the original developers of OR would have had the clout to be able to do something similar. Yes, there may indeed be a final product available for those who contributed to the Kickstarter, but whether it will still be the project that they were told they would get when they were convinced to contribute is not clear. It will now become the product that Facebook wants, which is probably not the same as what the original Kickstarter contributors wanted.

      On the contrary, the cash injection will be used to rectify manufacturing issues and increase speed of development. So a better product should hit the market sooner.

      It will be a "better" project by Facebook's standards, not by the standards of the contributors.

      Why, then, is everyone so pissed off? They are pissed off because they don't like Facebook and they don't trust it not to fuck up the final product. Whilst the fucking up is a concern, it has not yet occurred and may not occur at all. So I don't reckon this is the real beef they have.

      This is Facebook we're talking about. Their watchwords are big data and advertisement. You are hopelessly naïve if you really believe that two billion dollars will not distort the final product's vision in any way. Ask yourself why Facebook would pump in so much cash into Oculus Rift if they didn't believe that they could leverage the technology being developed for its own purposes.

      --
      Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
      • (Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Monday March 31 2014, @01:08AM

        by umafuckitt (20) on Monday March 31 2014, @01:08AM (#23383)

        Ask yourself why Facebook would pump in so much cash into Oculus Rift if they didn't believe that they could leverage the technology being developed for its own purposes.

        I certainly have asked myself that and, TBH, the answer isn't obvious to me. It's an odd investment for them. In fact, it's mainly for this reason that I'm not concerned about the buy out. I think I'd be more concerned if it were Sony or Microsoft were buying it, since in that case I'd expect the Oculus to turn into a hard to hack console-only device. With Facebook buying it things are more mysterious. Only time will tell, I guess.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @05:11AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @05:11AM (#23437)

          That doesn't matter. The whole point is that the community which contributed to the Kickstarter no longer has any influence whatsoever in the direction the product is going to take. Facebook now owns it body and soul, and they are now well within their rights to alter the product in whatever way they see fit, up to and including cancelling the project completely, and no one will be able to gainsay them for it. Admittedly it's unlikely that they'll do that, because no one pisses away two billion without at the very least trying to make part of it back.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @12:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @12:07AM (#23359)

    Anyone with good street sense knows Facebook is for idiots.

    I personally know of several Kickstarter projects which have
    sucked up money and never provided ANY benefit to the suckers
    who donated money.

    Use this crap if you like but I'll never use either one.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by teppy on Monday March 31 2014, @12:24AM

    by teppy (3561) on Monday March 31 2014, @12:24AM (#23362)

    What is really needed is a system where small players can actually *invest* in a startup. The thing that prevents this is the SEC: If you want to take money from up to 10 investors, you need to do a bunch of paperwork and lawyering. If you want to expand that to 25 investors, it's a shit-ton more paperwork and lawyering. And you're not allowed to do any "public solicitation", and you can only take money from "Accredited Investors" with net worths of $1M, and there are restrictions on which states the investors can live in. And it changes based on which state the company is in.

    Yes, it's all done under the guise of protecting little-old-ladies from investment scams. But in the mean time, the good investments are the exclusive domain of the already rich "Accredited Investors," while everyone else gets to pick from publicly traded companies that mostly have their explosive growth behind them.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @12:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @12:53AM (#23372)

      So what's your proposed solution? "We know what we are doing so rules don't need to apply?" Given that so many posters think they need to clarify how Kickstarter works, one can hardly assume all backers knew what they were doing in the first place.

      • (Score: 0) by teppy on Monday March 31 2014, @01:47AM

        by teppy (3561) on Monday March 31 2014, @01:47AM (#23393)

        Yeah, my proposed solution is that it's my money and I can do what I want with it. If someone is actually pulling a scam (fraud: lying in order to persuade people to act in a certain way), then arrest them. But leave me alone to spend or invest my money the way I desire.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @07:46AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @07:46AM (#23476)

          In other words, your solution is to let you keep your winnings but arrest the other guy if you loses?

          "Can do what you want with your money" would include investing in stupid scams that loses all your money. So why would you want the other guy arrested in such case? You invested willingly, right?

          If "lying" is so easy to prove in a criminal investigation, all politicians will be in jail by now.

          Has it occurred to you that all the SEC regulations are there to *prevent* fraud? You do realize that arresting the perpetrator AFTER they lose many people their money, while laudable, did NOT recover peoples' lost money, right?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @02:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @02:33AM (#23402)

      Cutting that red tape really would be a "game changer". Even if startups only offered up to 49% of their company on KS, in the case of Oculus that would mean $1 billion going to backers.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @01:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31 2014, @01:48PM (#23560)

      little-old-ladies from investment scams

      My sister and the guy she works with make a *very* good living getting money *back* for old ladies. The dudes who run these scams are the scum of the earth they will do anything. They do not even care they are breaking the law.

      It is obvious you do not think like a criminal (this is a good thing). These guys worked around the laws in place with some technicality. The laws are complex because of these scumbags.

      These laws give those people some recourse to get their money back. You propose taking that away.

      the good investments are the exclusive domain of the already rich "Accredited Investors,"
      Most of this type of investment is garbage. I would estimate a good 95% of them fold. With the remaining group to be sold off to bigger fish.

      You can enjoy some of the "Accredited Investors," groups. There are plenty of them out there to join. Just do not expect to get rich doing it. In fact expect the opposite.

      For every facebook/google/apple/microsoft/ibm/intel There are thousands of companies that failed. Some of them were even just outright scams.

      Have we overreached with the laws? Perhaps. But most of them are because some dick took an existing thing to its limits (and past).

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by zim on Monday March 31 2014, @05:20AM

    by zim (1251) on Monday March 31 2014, @05:20AM (#23438)
    Kickstarter. Where you can buy products that do not exist. And pay for it with money you do not have by credit card.