Oculus Quest 2 owners forced to use a Facebook account with the headset and those that merged their Oculus account with the social network will be able to unlink and retain their software purchases in the future.
The confirmation comes from incoming Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth (head of the company’s Reality Labs future-building effort). We asked Bosworth directly if we could unlink and delete our Facebook accounts from Quest and still keep our software purchases, to which he simply replied: “Yup”. This follows the announcement of a rebranding that will see Facebook’s corporate name and identity go Meta.
Once unlinked, Quest owners should even be able to delete their Facebook account and retain their VR software purchases.“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Founder’s Letter.
Last year Facebook revealed that “all future unreleased Oculus devices” would require a Facebook account and then released Quest 2 with the requirement.
Now, though, Zuckerberg and Bosworth seem to be steering Meta’s VR work in a different direction. We previously reported Meta Quest 2 branding will replace Oculus Quest 2 as Zuckerberg sheds the most visible elements of the team he acquired in 2014 from Brendan Iribe, Palmer Luckey, and others for $3 billion. We also reported Meta would allow the use of an “account other than your personal Facebook account,” though the wording in yesterday’s keynote was vague.
There’s still more to learn about how this will work, but the changes come as Zuckerberg recently signaled the Reality Labs effort at Meta would require continually growing investment starting with $10 billion this year.
“Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and their brands aren’t changing either. We’re still the company that designs technology around people.”
Meta starts with a headcount of nearly 70,000 and the bulk of the revenue fueling the organization comes from its legacy “family of apps” like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp. So while “the metaverse encompasses both the social experiences and future technology”, future Reality Labs are planned to sell “at cost or subsidized to make them available to more people.
