Back in August, Oculus revealed that its latest VR headset, the Quest 2, would require a Facebook account before use. That didn’t go down so well with most folks, and now we have perfect proof of why it’s such a dumb idea.
The Quest 2 began shipping this week but many early adopters have discovered that they can’t use it after failing Facebook’s verification process for creating new accounts, effectively turning the VR headset into a $299 piece of junk (or a “paperweight,” as some affected users are calling it). Others have tried reviving their old accounts but were still met with the banhammer.
“I wasnt a fan of creating a Facebook account after deleting mine 5 years ago but for the sake of the quest 2 decided to get back on,” wrote on user on r/oculus. “I entered all my real information and had my account immediately disabled. Now I have a $300 paper weight until someone from Facebook decides the fate of VR for me. What a piss poor launch for the quest 2.”
“People who are having trouble logging in to their device aren’t losing access to their purchased content, based on what we’re seeing in customer service reports,” Facebook wrote in a seemingly unrelated and confusing statement (via UploadVR). “Someone may temporarily experience an issue accessing content if they have trouble logging in to Quest 2 with their Facebook account, but they will be able to access their content once those login issues are resolved.”
Facebook claims that the account hiccups are only happening to a small amount of Quest 2 owners, but the amount of activity on social media suggests otherwise. It would be funny if the social media giant tried launching a gaming console with this same type of nonsense.