Minecraft creator and founder of the studio Mojang, Markus “Notch” Persson, has scrapped his plans for an Oculus Rift version. “Facebook creeps me out,” he gives as the reason for withdrawing the deal. According to him, Facebook is not a game company.
Immediately after announcing the acquisition of the Oculus Rift maker by Facebook, Persson already announced its withdrawal. He explains this position in a blog post. According to him, Facebook is not a company with tech enthusiasts at heart. “Facebook cares about increasing the number of users and nothing more,” Persson said. According to him, the company has in the past overhauled its platform for the social experience and games have suffered as a result. “I don’t want to work with social, I want to work with games,” he says.
“Their motives are unclear and it has not proved to be a stable platform. Nothing in their history makes me trust them and that makes them creepy to me,” concludes the Mojang founder. He is, however, very enthusiastic about the possibilities of virtual reality and realizes that the combination with a social platform can be very successful. He even invested $10,000 in the Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus Rift, “but not to build value for a Facebook acquisition.”
Facebook wants to build a new computing platform with virtual reality, which the Oculus Rift should help with. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes that Facebook will form the basis of the successor to the desktop platform and the current mobile variant, respectively. According to the CEO, Sony and Microsoft are no match for their VR plans.
The reactions from the game world range from disbelief and critical, to praise and enthusiasm, Gamasutra sums up. John Carmack, one of the driving forces behind the development of VR glasses, responds laconic that he should now get a Facebook account. According to him, Facebook offers the great economies of scale with its infrastructure that virtual reality will need,