The Facebookening of Oculus VR becomes more pronounced starting in October [Updated]

Enlarge (credit: Oculus / Aurich Lawson)

The next generation of virtual reality headsets remains unclear, but the VR software ecosystem just firmed up an unsurprising-and potentially unwelcome-requirement for a huge swath of users.

Starting "this October," anyone brand-new to the Oculus VR ecosystem will be forced to log in to devices using a Facebook account, instead of creating and logging into a separate Oculus-specific account. If you already have an Oculus account (which is free and doesn't require an Oculus-branded headset), you can continue using those credentials for existing headsets until January 1, 2023, at which point all connected Oculus services will not function without a Facebook account.

[Update, 4:40pm EDT: After this article's publication, a Facebook representative clarified to Ars Technica that this restriction is even more severe than we previously understood. "All future unreleased Oculus devices will require a Facebook account, even if you already have an Oculus account," the representative wrote.]

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