Now that the new owners of Oculus have monopolized anything to do with the social side of the Oculus system and basically ended about 50% of the reason people bought the product in the first place. (being able to join and play with friend)
I believe and some legal advisers have stated because no alternative was put in place for those who will not be forced to make a Facebook account and because when the produced was purchased no mention of this was conveyed to the purchaser. The product as a result is now less than the product that was originally purchased and a refund on not only the product but also any software that is also impacted by way of not being able to join, find or engage with friends.
This class action law suit if supported by enough purchasers of one of the Oculus systems will send a strong message to manufactures that monopolizing products after selling will be a costly exercise.
A simple fix to this would be to reinstate the original system and provide a Facebook alternative for those that choose it.
This message will be posted in as many forums as possible to garner support and further information about the class action will be updated later including how to join the class action.
Frankly, I don’t think a case like that would have any chance of success. They haven’t prevented you from joining or finding friends, they’ve implemented an additional (free) account requirement. You already had to use an Oculus account, now you additionally need a Facebook account. The Facebook account doesn’t impose any undue burden on you, because it has no cost, and does not require any more information than you already provided in setting up an Oculus account.
You or I may not like having to connect or create a Facebook account, and the additional requirement does seem pointless, but at the end of the day it really makes no material difference.
Frankly I don't know that a case like this would fail to be successful at all considering that this sought of behavior is illegal in several counties including a number in the European Union. I have direct knowledge of six individuals within EU member states that are already getting information together to mount legal challenges. I'm hoping their are willing to join the class action currently gathering.
I have also today email Mark Zuckerberg personally with more information and also links to this forum post, hopefully we can avert any action being necessary.
My suggestion to you is to moderate and not involve yourself in legal maters you appear to have little to no understanding of.
Wow! Bring a lawsuit because a hardware manufacturer bases their social interactions over their own platform... Thanks, I don't think I'll sign up, I prefer meeting friends on a mutually agreed mediumk so kindly continue without my support.
Is anything stopping someone from building a social app with it's own internal friends list that doesn't use Facebook? I'm pretty sure the answer is no but I haven't tested it.
Is anything stopping someone from building a social app with it's own internal friends list that doesn't use Facebook? I'm pretty sure the answer is no but I haven't tested it.
That can definitely be done.
There's two things that make it less likely though:
- It's much easier to use the existing platform and avatar sdks that handle all this for the devs, and facebook are doing the back end server hosting.
- It's very unlikely other games will share the same system, so you get lots of one-offs with different features.
Now if Unity or Unreal added a default social system that they hosted... that would let games share friends and social stuff not only without a facebook login, but also between all VR (and non VR) platforms.
