The Oculus Rift isn’t a commercial product yet, with the Dev Kit 2 being designed for developers who want to get a headstart on designing VR games, but that hasn’t stopped unscrupulous resellers in China from flipping them for a tidy profit.
This is bad news for legitimate developers in the region, because Oculus VR has ceased accepting pre-orders for the device in China, and has even cancelled some existing pre-orders.
An Oculus VR representative responded to complaints in regards to cancelled orders over on Reddit.
“Yes, it is a bummer that we’ve had to suspend sales in China due to extreme reseller purchases. We need to make sure that we are doing what we can to make sure that resellers that are looking to flip our product for a profit are not taking stock away from legitimate developer purchases globally. Our product, in its current form, is a developer kit, meant for developers that develop VR content. We are looking into alternative ways to make sure that our development kits are getting into legitimate developer hands in China.”
While the company has not released figures for the amount of resold units, the number must be great. “We were forced to suspend an entire country from purchasing. I’ll let you put 2 and 2 together,” Oculus VR employee TheTwistgibber said in response to a Redditor asking for numbers.
This does not mean that all orders from China have been cancelled, however, and an alternative sales method is being looked into. There’s no timeline for this, though.
Cheers, Games in Asia.