Facebook Accidentally Shipped 'Tens of Thousands' of VR Controllers With Hidden Messages Like 'Big Brother is Watching' and 'The Masons Were Here' (businessinsider.com)

Facebook accidentally shipped "tens of thousands" of virtual reality (VR) controllers with bizarre hidden messages, including "Big Brother is Watching" and "The Masons Were Here," reports BusinessInsider. From the report: Nate Mitchell, the cofounder of Facebook-owned VR organisation Oculus, wrote on Twitter on Friday that the company inadvertently printed some unusual messages inside its Touch controllers, handheld devices for playing games and navigating inside VR. These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said -- but a mistake meant they were included in regular production devices. "Unfortunately, some 'easter egg' labels meant for prototypes accidentally made it onto the internal hardware for tens of thousands of Touch controllers," the tech executive wrote.

Comments

IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!

[Rick Schumann]

..or was it? YOU decide.
Meanwhile the members of The Resistance who were responsible for this have been rounded up and 're-educated' in Facebooks' private re-education (blacksite) facility, no doubt. Or perhaps straight into unmarked graves.

Help im trapped in this factory

[kushks]

It reads like one of those fortune cookies with a fortune that reads as an SOS help me message The engineers are trying to tell us somthing

treat all systems as if they are production

[unity]

"These messages were intended only for prototypes, he said"

This is why you always treat data in test and devel systems as if it was a production or a demo system.

It is not good when you are demoing to a customer and they login with a test account and are greeted with the message, "Welcome back, Big Asshole."

IT WAS VIRAL MARKETING!

[tomhath]

Run out and buy one quick - they'll be more collectable than Beanie Babies. And the marketing drones who thought this up will get nice bonuses.

Title is missleading

[HannethCom]

To be clear, most of these have not shipped yet. This is the batch to go with the Quest and Rift S kits.
If you currently have touch controllers, the insides of them do not have these sayings.

The exception is the dev kits for these have shipped and they have the sayings, "Big Brother is Watching" and "Hi iFixit! We See You!"

The consumer touch controllers that are about to ship say, "This Space For Rent" & "The Masons Were Here."
Facebook does not plan to recall any of these. You have to unscrew your controller and open it up to see these messages.