Oculus VR and Facebook deal approved by government money men

Oculus VR and Facebook deal can go ahead

The US Federal Trade Commission has approved the $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook. While it was announced last month – to what can only really be called a shit-storm – Facebook and Oculus VR were merely revealing their intention to make the deal. The acquisition was still to happen. 

And since the announcement there’s been a lot going on, with a hiring spree at Oculus, developers condemning and commending it, and Palmer Luckey trying to do a bunch of damage control. 

Since the plan for acquisition was made public on March 25th, Oculus VR has recruited Valve VR guru Michael Abrash and Valve VR researcher and developer Aaron Nicholls, who join Valve alumni Atman Binstock.

Despite Luckey’s many assurances that Facebook wouldn’t be meddling in Oculus VR’s plans for games, he and his colleagues have received calls to their homes and, inconceivably, death threats. Notch also said the deal was guff or something, while drinking champagne out of a fedora.

It’s not all been bad, though. CCP were the first to back Oculus VR up, Epic wants to get romantically involved with VR and Star Citizen’s Chris Roberts said of the deal, “My hope is that Facebook’s funding will let Oculus compete with much bigger companies and deliver an attractively priced consumer headset at the scale needed for mass market adoption without the loss of the incredible passion that convinced me to back the project.”

And David Attenborough doesn’t seem to give a toss, and that man’s basically Radagast the Brown.

So it’s been a turbulent month for the VR developer, but soon it will have an absurd amount of resources at its disposal, hopefully bringing us the Oculus Rift sooner than if it’d stayed “indie”.