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VR Devs Pull Support For Oculus Rift Until Palmer Luckey Steps Down (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the not-so-secret-anymore dept.

After it was revealed that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey backed a pro-Trump political organization called Nimble America that is dedicated to "shitposting" and spreading inflammatory memes about Hillary Clinton, several developers of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset have announced that they will stop supporting the headset until its founder steps down. One of the biggest developers for Oculus Rift, Insomniac Games, told Motherboard, "Insomniac Games condemns all forms of hate speech. While everyone has a right to express his or her political opinion, the behavior and sentiments reported do not reflect the values of our company. We are also confident that his behavior and sentiment does not reflect the values of the many Oculus employees we work with on a daily basis." Fez and Superhypercube developer Polytron also said in a statement, "In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform." Motherboard reports: Motherboard has reached out to several other, more well-known VR developers who work with Oculus including Fantastic Contraption makers Northway Games and Job Simulator makers Owlchemy Labs. Northway Games couldn't be reached immediately for comment but tweeted the following: "What. The. Fuck. [accompanied with a link to the news via Kotaku]" and "Definitely using every fibre of my 'professionalism' to not tweet some tweets right now." Owlchemy Labs, which is currently developing for Job Simulator for the Oculus Touch controls, declined to comment either way. E McNeill, who has developed a couple of games for Oculus Rift and GearVR, suggested that like-minded VR developers raise money for Hillary Clinton's campaign to counter the money Luckey has raised for Trump. [E McNeill tweeted: "Idle Q: Would any Oculus devs join me in a donation drive for HIllary? We could aim to beat Nimble America's $11k. I'd start with $1k myself."] "This backlash is nonsense," said James Green, co-founder of VR developer Carbon Games. "I absolutely support him doing whatever he wants politically if it's legal. To take any other position is against American values."

7 of 657 comments (clear)

  1. So basically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So basically these developers are intolerant of any type of political message other than their own.

    1. Re:So basically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The "political message" was spamming social media via bots to upload and upvote images. It's not the contents so much as the delivery method that's a proble.m

    2. Re:So basically... by geoskd · · Score: 5, Informative

      And liberal groups are not attacking Trump with similar tactics?

      Thats too much like work, its far easier to just replay everything he actually says. It goes viral on its own...

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
  2. I just love it when somebody says... by Yosho · · Score: 5, Informative

    "While everyone has a right to express his or her political opinion", because the second part to that sentence always comes out being something like, "we don't think this person should be able to express theirs."

    Also apparently Luckey's girlfriend has been harassed off of Twitter, and you'll get banned from NeoGaf if you suggest that maybe she shouldn't be harassed. Stay classy, internet.

    --
    Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  3. Re:No one likes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Considering how much corporate money is flowing into Hillary's campaign... She's obviously not going to change that.

    Hillary... on paper, she's everything Democrats claim to hate.

    And for a party that claims to fight hate... There sure is a lot of violence, racisim and hate coming from the party that says they want to bring us together.

    Of course... they mean "we want to unite... as long as you vote Democrat and agree with everything we say". It's all about freedom of speech and freedom of expression until you say "Hillary is a POS".

  4. "Shitposting" is fraud, not speech by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Shitposting" is fraud rather than speech for a few reasons.

    It is knowingly false. For example, "shitposters" distribute a purported photo of Hillary Clinton in blackface with Bill, which doesn't match her eye color or her and Bill's appearance at the time. But they keep distributing it.

    They then spoof the comment system by having robots upmod posts and downmod their detractors, thus fraudulently promoting their comments as highly regarded.

    They mis-state the first amendment of the constitution by telling people that reactions to their abuse are hypocritical and against the first amendment, when the first amendment does not protect anyone from the consequences of their speech, nor does it promise anyone the podium of their choice.

    Taking action to show your disapproval of such action is laudable.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  5. Free Speech by hduff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is free speech working the way it should work.

      I refer you to the XKCD panels about the First Amendment.
    http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fr...

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert