• News

Facebook accounts required for new Oculus users starting in October, existing users by 2023

In a strange move, Facebook will be requiring new users of Oculus VR products to have a Facebook account after October 2020. Existing users will be required to have one by 2023.

TJ Denzer

August 18, 2020 11:50 AM

2

Facebook is a place of questionable value when it comes to social media. Sure you can connect with friends and family and join groups to hear the latest within your community, interests, or the world at large, but it also comes with being inundated with other questionable practices regarding data use, toxicity, misinformation, and manipulable ads. Unfortunately, if you intend to invest in Oculus VR products, you’re going to have to deal with it soon as Facebook establishes a requirement for new users to create a Facebook account to use Oculus devices. What’s perhaps more annoying is that it will be required for even existing users by 2023.

Facebook announced its plans for new requirements and the 2023 sunsetting of Oculus accounts on the Oculus website on August 18, 2020. According to the guidelines, starting on October 1, 2020, using a new Oculus product will require users to either create or log-in with a Facebook account. If you already have an Oculus account, you’ll have until January 1, 2020 to merge that Oculus account with an existing or new Facebook account and support for Oculus accounts will end entirely.

If you’re an existing user and already have an Oculus account, you’ll have the option to log in with Facebook and merge your Oculus and Facebook accounts.

If you’re an existing user and choose not to merge your accounts, you can continue using your Oculus account for two years.

— Oculus (@oculus) August 18, 2020

In addition to removing Oculus account support in 2023 and requiring Facebook accounts for new users, Oculus headsets will also drop the Oculus VR Code of Conduct to adopt Facebook’s Community Guidelines. It’s not the first questionable decision Facebook has made since acquiring Oculus VR in 2014. Facebook had already rolled out social features on the Oculus platforms that required an account with the former to use, as well as employing ads that utilized data collection, as reported by Road to VR in late 2019.

Regardless, if you’ve been holding out on use of Oculus for VR services, or if you were planning on getting into Oculus products in the near future, it appears to only be a matter of time before there’s no choice but to go through Facebook.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.