Facebook buying Oculus Rift for $2 billion has caused the virtual-reality headset creators to lose out on a "Minecraft" deal.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday the social media company has signed a deal with Oculus Rift in a blog post.
"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Zuckerberg said. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."
However, video game designer and "Minecraft" creator Markus "Notch" Persson was not thrilled about Facebook's purchase and refuses to do business with the social media giant.
"We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus," Persson wrote on his official Twitter account. "I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out."
Persson also published a post on Notch.net about how the virtual reality will change the world, detailing why working with Facebook raises red flags in his mind:
Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build.
Don't get me wrong, VR is not bad for social. In fact, I think social could become one of the biggest applications of VR. Being able to sit in a virtual living room and see your friend's avatar? Business meetings? Virtual cinemas where you feel like you're actually watching the movie with your friend who is seven time zones away?
But I don't want to work with social, I want to work with games.
Fortunately, the rise of Oculus coincided with competitors emerging. None of them are perfect, but competition is a very good thing. If this means there will be more competition, and VR keeps getting better, I am going to be a very happy boy. I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven't historically been a stable platform. There's nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.
You can read Persson's full post about Facebook's Oculus Rift purchase here.
