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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 14 2019, @02:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the conspiracies-everywhere dept.

Creepy Messages Will be Found in Facebook's Oculus Touch VR Controllers

Facebook has revealed that hidden messages were inadvertently printed inside VR controllers that will be shipped to customers soon:

Facebook said it accidentally hid bizarre and "inappropriate" messages inside "tens of thousands" of virtual-reality controllers, including "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons Were Here." Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Oculus, the Facebook-owned VR company, said on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages in its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating VR environments.

These messages were intended only for prototypes, but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices, he said. Some messages were included in developer kits for people building software for the product, while others made their way into consumer devices in significantly larger numbers. While there should have been no internal messages of any kind in any of the devices, a Facebook representative told Business Insider that the company would not recall them.

"Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," Mitchell wrote. "The messages on final production hardware say 'This Space For Rent' & 'The Masons Were Here.' A few dev kits shipped with 'Big Brother is Watching' and 'Hi iFixit! We See You!' but those were limited to non-consumer units," he said. iFixit is a tech repair company known for publicly deconstructing new gadgets and posting photos of their innards online.

Also at Road to VR.

Related: Facebook Announces a New Standalone VR Headset: Oculus Quest; HTC Releases Vive Wireless Adapter
(nobody made a submission about Rift S because it is boring)


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:52PM

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Sunday April 14 2019, @09:52PM (#829491) Journal

    I agree -- and I've always found easter eggs to be a good reminder that real, live human beings created the software/hardware, not emotionless automatons. My favorite easter egg was originally a prank that one of the developers of a late-80s tile-based RPG played on the game's producer/director while they were play/bugtesting: dude waited until his target left the room for some reason, then snuck over to the guy's computer and caused it to flip all of the tiles (but not the frame around them) upside-down [mobygames.com]. The producer reportedly went scrambling trying to figure out what kind of bizarre bug could possibly cause that, but upon realizing it was just a prank, found it funny enough to leave it hidden in the game as an easter egg.

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