Oculus Rift creator receives death threats over Facebook acquisition

Oculus staff and their families have received death threats over Facebook’s recent acquisition of the company, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has revealed.

Luckey explained in a post on Reddit that while Oculus employees had anticipated an initial negative reaction from the masses, the company didn’t believe the backlash would reach such a spiteful level.

We expected a negative reaction from people in the short term, we did not expect to be getting so many death threats and harassing phone calls that extended to our families,” Luckey said.

We know we will prove ourselves with actions and not words, but that kind of shit is unwarranted, especially since it is impacting people who have nothing to do with Oculus.”

The threats are, unfortunately, an all too familiar occurrence both from within the industry and among the general online community – just last month Flappy Bird creator Nguyen received multiple death threats over Twitter for pulling his game from app stores.

Valve’s former head of VR Michael Abrash recently joined Oculus, and John Carmack has spoken out in favor of the deal – stating that Facebook gets the big picture.” The deal will almost assuredly bring the Oculus Rift to market earlier than previously possible.