Oculus/Facebook trying to bribe developers for exclusive hostageware

The Game Room
1

Serious Sam Dev offered shit-ton of money for Rift exclusivity

The Oculus Rift was intended to be an open, consumer-friendly VR headset that would make VR gaming practical. They had a lot of cool people involved and a good philosophy. Then they were bought out by facebook. Which everyone knew was going to be a complete shitshow, because how in the fuck could that possibly go well?

Valve actually gave a ton of their VR research to Oculus for free because they were a well-meaning company with the right idea. After the facebook buyout, when it was clear that they’d no longer be open and consumer-friendly, Valve designed their own VR headset (built by HTC), the Vive.

Now Oculus, who built their VR gear on Valve software/technology/research, is trying to fuck over Valve (and all other entrants to the VR market) and consumers by bribing third party companies to make their games exclusive to the Oculus.

Valve is trying to create the OpenVR standard, where anyone who comes into the VR headset market can have their headset work with every game. You can play any Valve game, or any steam game, made for VR with any headset. Oculus is attempting to lock people down to the Oculus store only (even to the point where when you play multiplayer on an Oculus store game you’re forced to play with only other Oculus store version owners), and to make sure that no other VR headsets will work with the Oculus store.

And now they’re using those facebook deep pockets to go to all the companies developing VR products to make them only work on the Oculus. That sort of exclusivity is extremely anti-consumer. It fractures a budding VR market that needs to be open and easily accessible. Fracturing the VR player base into different games and different stores depending on your particular hardware makes the industry even less appealing for developers because you’re targeting fewer potential consumers. They’re actually increasing the likelihood that the whole VR movement will fail so that if it doesn’t, they’re the dominant player. And even if it doesn’t kill the movement entirely, it certainly makes it less consumer friendly.

Yes, I know this sort of thing already exists on consoles. And it’s really shitty there and people shouldn’t put up with it. But PC gaming has never had that sort of forced exclusivity. And we won’t stand for that bullshit.

No one should get a rift. The price difference between the units is minor when you consider the Vive already has working room-space VR, which is really the most transformative experience, and when the Rift puts it out it’ll probably cost an extra $150 for the cameras and controllers anyway. So you’re talking about a $50 difference when you’ve probably spent $1500+ on the PC and headset anyway.

Is it worth buying hardware from facebook, which is already proven to spy on you, who are trying to fragment and control the VR market, who are paying lots of money just to deny gaming experiences to a fraction of the market, and will do god knows what with all those facebook VR users once they get ahold of the market over the company that has been one of the most consumer-friendly companies in the world and has done so much for PC gaming? To save $50? For fucks sake.

And if you think “well, I’m better off getting a Rift because then I can play rift-exclusive games and everything else too”, then you’re supporting this business practice and punish the company that’s cool enough to be open at everything, so you’re being really selfish and short sighted.

Don’t buy hardware from facebook. Because we knew shit like this was going to happen, and it’s just the start of it.

2

I am 100% in agreement with the OP.

3

It seems to me that Valve is already holding more of the cards than Facebook. All they have to say is “if your game doesn’t support the VR standard, we won’t carry it in our store”. And since Steam has such a dominant share of market, it’ll be tough to say no to that. They might not have All The Money, but they won’t need it.

4

I think that’s what facebook wants - they’re opening a competing storefront that they completely control, the Oculus store, and I think they’re only going to allow those paid exclusives to be there, not on Steam.

5

I agree with the sentiment. this kind of shit happens all the time on consoles, and it sucks to see it on the PC.

6

Of course the problem Facebook sees is: how do we make money on this thing. R&D probably cost a small fortune, never mind the original acquisition.

Hardware for something like this will never be enough - the margins just aren’t there. Software is pretty much the only way to make money, at least right now.

They should have stuck With Valve. Maybe worked out a revenue split of some kind for games that used VR.

7

The OP omits a very important word: “temporary”. I don’t know the specifics of what Facebook was asking for, but it’s not automatically immoral to pay a developer to make up for getting it working one system at a time instead of trying to port it to everything at once - especially when one focuses on sit-down VR and the other supports room-scale VR.

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But the whole point of what Valve is doing is that “porting it to everything at once” would be no harder than just porting it to a single system, since everyone would be using the same standards.

And I’m sure that Facebook would like for its game store to be able to compete with Steam. A lot of software companies would like to do that. But between Steam’s already strongly dominant position, and their persistent habit of not pissing people off (customers or developers), I think the odds of that happening are pretty low.

9

Yeah, pretty much the only people who can compete with Steam is GoG, and that’s because they started in a somewhat niche market before branching out. That and they’re backed by CD Projekt which have made a big effort to get a lot of good will with anti-DRM policies (and their subsidiary releasing Witcher 3).

Origin is kind of there only by proxy of its exclusives, but nobody is excited to use it. Granted, this is how Steam was at the beginning, but Steam also didn’t have today’s Steam to compete with.

Facebook’s store will be the same. You have to take the tiny subset of gamers who can afford a VR headset, the smaller subset that went for the Rift, and then people will only go to that store for VR killer apps. I don’t see Facebook making much money on this. Maintaining a store for VR apps that a fraction of a fraction of a consumer base (albeit one that is probably fairly wealthy and willing to try new things) will purchase.

10

I was not aware of the facts in the OP, but taken at face value I would definitely agree with it, and would add that (a) the HTC Vive is by all accounts superior to the Oculus product (and certainly a fantastic device in my personal experience), and (b) Zuckerberg is a douchebag. I do not, however, travel in these circles and comment merely based on hearsay from those who do and my own opportunity to experience the Vive on several occasions. And also on the aforementioned douchebag’s attempts to oppose, and then back down from, the rulings of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in regard to his douchebag privacy violations.

11

Temporary doesn’t make it okay, it just makes it slightly less shitty. They’re trying to buy market share by being the headset with the most exclusives early on, and then when they’ve got market share, they’re going to push all of their other exclusivity shit to try to control people.

They’re not “paying them to get it working for one system at a time”, it’s trivially easy to get things to work on all VR headsets at once. They’re paying to try to make the experience of their competitor shittier, which is anti-consumer. They aren’t making anything better for their customers, they’re just trying to make it worse for their competitor’s customers.

And saying “one focuses on sit-down VR and the other supports room-scale VR” is very silly and misleading. It suggests that there’s a dichotomy, that each unit has different strengths. But that’s not true. The Vive has every bit of the sit-down experience the Rift has. There’s nothing the Rift can do that the Vive cannot. So trying to portray it as “tailoring to the strengths of the Rift” or something is just wrong.

12

Valve is apparently also trying to fund risky starter VR projects, but with no attempts to force exclusivity. They want VR to succeed, not for everyone but them to fail.

13

Well, I mean, it’s also easy to appear philanthropic if you’re the presumptive default marketplace. They don’t need to force exclusivity because they already stand to gain. Facebook isn’t in a position in the game’s marketplace to directly benefit from VR technology.

Valve is a pretty cool company, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t you can neglect that their position in the marketplace allows them to be the “good guys” and still easily make returns on projects that pan out.

It’s like Microsoft’s new “play anywhere” stuff. Gee, it sure is great that they’re letting me get all of their exclusives on Windows 10 instead of having to buy their console! Well, sure, but that’s because they have an app store on PC where they can get a cut. It’s a desire to make more money off PC distribution.

14

Imagine if another company like EA or Activision had a huge lead in the digital market like Steam does. Do you think they’re as open and consumer-friendly as Valve has been? There’s no chance. They would’ve tried to exploit their dominant position to squeeze every last bit of money and control out of their consumers.

They’ve always been very open and consumer friendly and did what’s best for gaming.

If they wanted to, they could use the power of Steam/Vive to dominate the VR market and fuck over Oculus and make lots of stuff exclusive to them. They’ve got more power over the digital distribution market to actually make it happen, compared to the Oculus Store which is a startup. But they’ve always done what’s genuinely good for gaming in general.

It’s a sad commentary on (our idea of) capitalism, I think, that the only reason they can do this is because they’re a privately owned company. If they were publically owned, it would be their duty to try to fuck everyone over, their customers and competition.

15

Facebook took a slight step back and Oculus Store DRM won’t hardware check for an Oculus

That sounds bigger than it is. It doesn’t mean Oculus Store games will support any other headsets, nor that games won’t be exclusive to the oculus store.

There’s a guy who makes ReVive which is a hardware wrapper that translates Oculus Store -> Oculus headset interactions and makes them work on the Vive. When Oculus added the hardware-check to its DRM, ReVive couldn’t make it work unless they disabled the DRM completely. Which also makes it serve as a crack for piracy.

So by removing the hardware check, ReVive doesn’t need to disable the DRM to work. So you can use this to unofficially play Oculus Store stuff on the Vive, which still benefits Facebook because you’re using their store.

So this really doesn’t change their stance on exclusivity, but it maybe does show that the backlash made them rethink things a bit.

16

There’s also the matter that a large part of the reason that Steam became the dominant player in the market is because of their previous history of trying to do the right thing for their customers. Funny how it turns out that people like being treated well.

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Shame on them, then, for not maximizing shareholder value. People like that are irresponsible and will never make money on the stock market.

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It’s funny you should say that - it seems that the only recent Valve can be decent people and not try to fuck everyone over at every time is that they’re a privately owned company with no shareholders to answer to. If they were public, people would demand that they be customer-exploiting assholes.