Upset about Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus earlier this week? Now you and a few million friends might be able to do something about it. Twinbeard, developer of the bizarre and humorous indie game Frog Fractions, has added a new stretch goal to its Kickstarter campaign for Frog Fractions 2: a $2 billion level promising to “buy Oculus back from Facebook.”
With its new stretch goal, obviously in jest, Twinbeard joins other independent game developers and users who were blindsided and upset by the Facebook deal. Markus “Notch” Persson, developer of the hugely popular Minecraft, also reacted negatively to the deal, notifying users via his blog that he had cancelled plans to develop Minecraft for Oculus and calling Facebook “creepy.”
Oculus, a company crowdfunded by game fans, promised to in many ways democratize the next major step in gaming’s evolution by providing consumers and independent developers direct access to technology traditionally reserved for the largest game studios and corporations. With the Facebook acquisition, the majority of the early Oculus community feels that the company has “sold out.”
The Frog Fractions 2 Kickstarter campaign currently sits at about $44,000 of its $60,000 base goal with 13 days remaining, making it unlikely that the project will hit even its “real” stretch goals. Considering the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Facebook’s Oculus acquisition, however, it would be interesting to see the company’s reaction to selling its new asset “back to the people.”
