Having been part of the VR ecosystem since the DK1 and I having had the opportunity to go to Oculus Connect 1, I can't say that I'm surprised by Facebook/Oculus' move in this direction.
At OC1 they handed out copies of Ready Player One, and it was pretty clear that they saw a future where they could control and monetize VR one way or another. Though the irony seems to have been lost on them that there is an evil corp called IOI in Ready Player One trying to seize control.
In any case, it was only a matter of time before this happened.
The thing that turned me off Oculus development actually happened around the same time as the release of the Quest, where they started to aggressively gate-keep what could come through the store, more so than even Apple/Google with their respective stores.
You essentially had to pitch them a concept before they would give you approval to start building (this is still the case for Quest 2 I believe). Now, I grant you that it's better to stop developers from wasting time and money if they're never going to be approved, but I also object to being told whether I can install something on my device or customer devices (there are workarounds, but they are just that).
At OC1 they handed out copies of Ready Player One, and it was pretty clear that they saw a future where they could control and monetize VR one way or another. Though the irony seems to have been lost on them that there is an evil corp called IOI in Ready Player One trying to seize control.
In any case, it was only a matter of time before this happened.
The thing that turned me off Oculus development actually happened around the same time as the release of the Quest, where they started to aggressively gate-keep what could come through the store, more so than even Apple/Google with their respective stores.
You essentially had to pitch them a concept before they would give you approval to start building (this is still the case for Quest 2 I believe). Now, I grant you that it's better to stop developers from wasting time and money if they're never going to be approved, but I also object to being told whether I can install something on my device or customer devices (there are workarounds, but they are just that).